


Leaving Downton

by Alex51324



Series: Leaving Downton [1]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-15
Updated: 2012-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-12 05:48:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/487404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alex51324/pseuds/Alex51324
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU from mid-episode 2X07. After Thomas’s black market disappointment, the Spanish Flu does not immediately arrive to provide him with an opportunity to slide back into his old job. Instead, a war acquaintance witnesses his despair and offers him a chance at a different life. Thomas/OMC, non-explicit.</p><p>Warnings are for brief, but graphic, descriptions of the horrors of war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

_Casualty Clearing Station, France, January 1916_

Thomas raised his head, blinking sleepily. 

“Ah, there’s my Tom-kitten,” said Captain Hartley. 

Thomas started to sit up and reach for his trousers. He didn’t usually let himself fall asleep in the Captain’s bed, after—being Hartley’s batman made a convenient excuse for being in and out of his quarters all the time, but the four other orderlies he was billeted with were bound to notice if he didn’t turn up all night. 

“You don’t have to go just yet—it’s early.”

“Oh—all right.” He settled back down in Hartley’s arms. 

Hartley brushed a kiss against his forehead. “I’ll miss you, you know.”

Thomas was startled for a moment, then remembered—his home leave, already delayed twice, was due to start in a few days. “It’s only a week.”

“Still.”

“Plenty of times more than a week goes by when we don’t have time to do—this.” 

“It isn’t just about this.”

“You can get one of the other orderlies to clean your boots.” 

Hartley laughed. “See—that’s why I’ll miss you. Any big plans? For your leave?”

“Paris, I think,” Thomas said. “I should be able to find something to do there.”

“Not home?”

Thomas hesitated. “Wouldn’t be much point. My mother’s dead.” He had thought, once or twice, about writing to O’Brien to ask if she could arrange for him to spend his leave at Downton, but in the ended had decided that was stupid. Even if they’d let him, why would he want to?

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t recent,” Thomas said, and regretted it. If he hadn’t said that, he could have used it to wangle a bereavement leave, at some future date. Ah, well. He still had a father, on paper at least. “I thought about London,” he continued, “but I’ve been there. Never been to Paris.” Plenty of the shops were open, from what he’d heard. He’d bring back as much liquor, cigarettes, and foodstuff as he could carry, and make a tidy profit on the venture. Maybe he’d send O’Brien some French knickers, for a joke. 

In fact, maybe he ought to start up a sideline in things like that—presents for the girl back home. He’d have to see about prices, when he got there. 

“It’s a lovely city,” Hartley was saying. “Of course, it isn’t what it was before the war. The theatres all shut last year, and most of the better restaurants. But the architecture is splendid, and that won’t have gone anywhere.”

“As long as you can get food that’s never seen the inside of a tin, I’ll be happy,” Thomas said. 

“I expect Paris can manage that much, even in wartime.” 

Thomas sat up and reached for his cigarettes, offering one to Hartley. 

“Thanks—Woodbines? Where’d you get these?”

“From a bloke who won’t be needing them anymore,” he said, holding out the lighter.

Hartley paused with his cigarette-end inches from the flame. “Thomas,” he said, clearly trying his best to sound stern. “We’ve spoken about this before.”

“He isn’t dead,” Thomas protested. “Or wasn’t. Last time I checked. He just doesn’t have a lower jaw anymore.” It was practically a miracle the whole packet hadn’t been drenched in blood; as it was, Thomas had only had to throw away two of them. 

“Stealing from the wounded is not an improvement over stealing from the dead.” He did, however, at last light his. 

“How’s he supposed to smoke them? Anyway, he said I could have them.”

“He was speaking to you, without a lower jaw?”

Thomas reminded himself that if Hartley was stupid enough to fall for that, they wouldn’t get on so well. “Well, he made a noise, when I asked if I could have them. I took it as a yes. Besides,” Thomas added. “He isn’t exactly in a position to complain.”

They both laughed. Even Thomas knew that it shouldn’t have been funny. The poor sod was probably dead by now, and if he wasn’t, he likely wished he was. But if he hadn’t laughed, Thomas would have had to think about how the man had looked, with his tongue hanging down where his chin ought to have been.


	2. Part One

_Downton Village, 1919_

“So we’re very nearly back to normal,” Clarkson said as they completed their tour of the village hospital. 

“I can see that,” Hartley said. To him, just demobilized, a medical facility that was _not_ full of the grievously wounded seemed the very opposite of normal. That was, in a way, why he was here. Calling on Clarkson seemed a way of easing himself back into that almost-forgotten life, a sort of no-man’s land between the charnel house of a casualty clearing station in France and his quiet country practice. “It’s all very modern—we don’t have anything like it in Bishopthorpe. It’s mostly house calls—if anyone needs skilled nursing, I’ve got to send them to the hospital in York.”

“Having the patronage of the Earl of Grantham does make a difference,” Clarkson admitted. As they stepped into his private office, he added, “It does mean the family feels free to ask for favors, but they aren’t too demanding, and in most cases it’s worked out well.”

“What kind of favors?” Hartley asked. “I hope they don’t try to influence treatment?”

“Not usually, although the heir’s mother…well, she is a trained nurse, so she knows a bit about it. No, I was thinking of staffing. The youngest daughter got it into her head to take up nursing, during the war. I wasn’t expecting her to be much help, but she turned out to be quite capable. And there was the footman they wanted brought here to die. They didn’t quite win that one, since we were designated by the War Office for officers only. Instead they had him moved up to the big house.”

Hartley barely heard anything after “footman.” He’d known, when he came here, that this was Thomas’s Downton, and he’d been both drawn to Downton and repelled from it by that knowledge. In the almost two years since Thomas had been sent to the front from the relative safety of the Casulaty Clearing Station, Hartley had tried to forget him, with incomplete success. “Which footman?” he blurted out, when Clarkson had finished talking. At Clarkson’s questioning look, he added, “One of my orderlies was a footman there before the war, as it happens.”

“Oh, that would have been the _other_ one,” Clarkson said. “Barrow?”

Hartley nodded.

“Him, they made me taken on as orderly after he was wounded.”

“Wounded,” Hartley repeated. All this time, he had been thinking that Thomas must be dead. “Was it serious?”

“No, not really. In fact, I don’t know how he got classified for Home Service with a wound like his. I’d have sent him back, once it was healed beyond the danger of infection, if it were my decision.”

Thomas, alive and not even seriously hurt. Hartley didn’t dare believe it. “Was he sent back?”

“No, he spent the duration of the war right here. You just missed him, in fact—he was only demobbed a couple of weeks ago, when the last of our military patients left. Say,” Clarkson added, “How did he end up wounded, if he was with you? I thought you were safe at a base hospital.”

“It was a CCS,” Hartley said. “But well behind the lines, yes. He was sent forward when we were asked to supply reinforcements for the Somme offensive.” That was the official version, anyway. Thomas had, in fact, been sent forward in disgrace after his shady dealings came to the attention of the CMO one too many times. “I didn’t think he’d survived.”

“Well, he’s a sharp one,” Clarkson said. “Wasted no time in getting his feet under the table once he was here.”

Hartley couldn’t exactly disagree with that—in fact, he probably knew more about it than Clarkson did. But being “a sharp one” didn’t count for much at the Front. “Do you know where he went?” Realizing Clarkson might think the question a strange one, he added, “I wouldn’t mind writing to him, just to see how he’s making out.”

“Still hanging around the village, like a bad penny, as far as I know. Trying to make a name for himself in the black market, according to my housekeeper.”

Hartley sighed inwardly. He would have thought that what happened in France would have been enough to cure Thomas to dealing in the black market. “Do you know where I might find him? I feel I ought to try to talk some sense into him,” he explained hastily. 

“I have a feeling that’ll be wasted effort,” Clarkson said. “But you can go round my place and ask the housekeeper; she’ll at least know where to start.”

After arranging with Clarkson to meet at his house for dinner later, Hartley sought out the housekeeper, who sent him to another person, who sent him to another, who gave Hartley the direction of a shed that was understood to be Barrow’s base of operations. “You leave a note, with what you’d like to buy,” she explained, “and he brings it round. Or so I’ve heard.”

Upon reaching the tumbledown shed, Hartley was shocked to find Thomas weeping, surrounded by what looked like the wreck of a dry-goods store. “Good heavens,” he said, stepping carefully inside. Thomas looked up at him, not seeming particularly surprised to see him. “Whatever on Earth is the matter?” he asked, sitting down next to him on a broken crate. 

The whole story came pouring out, starting with Thomas’s hopes to launch a legitimate business venture with his earnings, and ending with, “…only it’s all turned out to be rubbish. Just…plaster, and rubbish.” 

“Oh, Thomas,” Hartley sighed. “You should have known better than to get mixed up in all that. You deal with criminals, you have to expect--”

“I _know_.” Thomas stifled a sob and rubbed angrily at his eyes. “I know. I was very stupid, and now I’m ruined.”

“It can’t be as bad as all that.” 

“It is! I spent every penny I had, and then some, to buy this lot. I’ve been staying at Downton; nobody’s had the nerve to toss me out on my ear yet, but when they do, I’ll be…on a street-corner with a sign, ‘Help a starving veteran.’” 

“What about going back to being a footman? I know it’s not what you wanted, but it’s a roof over your head.”

Thomas shook his head. “They won’t have me back at Downton—I was about to be sacked when I signed up for the medical corps.” 

That was news to Hartley, but not exactly a shock. Then-Corporal Barrow had gained the coveted position as Hartley’s batman by trading on his status as former footman to a great house; he had, in fact, said that he was very close to being promoted to the Earl’s valet when he’d decided to enlist in the medical corps instead. And he had known his way around a clothes-brush, to be sure, but it had been obvious from the start that Hartley couldn’t trust the young man any further than he could see him. If he wasn’t nicking cigarettes from dying soldiers, he was treating officers’ VD under the table, or meeting his black market contacts behind the morgue shed. Hartley had kept him around because of the latter—supplies from England were often late or incorrect, and if something was desperately needed, Corporal Barrow could be relied upon to find a source of it. That was the reason he would admit to, anyway. “What for?” he asked. “Stealing?”

“No! Well…sort of.” 

Hartley just looked at him.

“All right,” Thomas muttered. “Remember how I said I was about to be promoted to his lordship’s valet?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I was,” Thomas said, as if daring Hartley to say otherwise. “But then this man Bates turned up, who had been his lordship’s batman in the Boer war. So he snatched the job out from under me, even though he was a cripple, and he’d been in prison, and I’d earned it…so I decided to show his lordship he couldn’t trust him, by making it look like Bates was stealing from him. Only he turned it around so it looked like I was the one stealing.”

“Which, in fact, you were,” Hartley pointed out. 

“No! I mean, I meant for him to get it back. After Bates had been caught with it.” He shook his head. “So I figured I’d make something of myself in the war, and it wouldn’t matter. Only now all that’s gone to shit, and they won’t have me back, or write me a decent reference. And with _this_ ….” He held up his scarred hand. “People want a footman that’s nice to look at, don’t they? Nobody’s going to hire a cripple without a character.”

“I trust the irony is not lost on you.” If Thomas’s account was to be believed—and Hartley assumed there were, at best, some details missing—his troubles had begun with his resentment at being passed over for a cripple with a dubious character. 

From the look on his face, Hartley suspected Thomas hadn’t thought of it that way. After a moment’s introspection, he said, “It isn’t the same.”

“No, I suppose not.” For one thing, this Bates had evidently managed to conduct himself appropriately enough during the war that his former officer wanted to give him another chance.

Thomas looked up, suddenly hopeful. “Unless….”

Hartley could have cursed himself for suggesting the parallel. “I don’t need a footman.”

“Valet? Orderly? Driver?” Thomas licked his lips. “Companion? Male secretary?”

The hell of it was, he wanted to say yes. He’d always liked Thomas. Against his better judgment. “There’s an old Indian fable about a maiden who picks up a snake in the road.”

Thomas leaned back. “A snake? Do tell.”

“She finds the snake lying in the road in a monsoon, sick and half-drowned. It’s a poisonous snake, so she plans to leave him there—sensible girl, this Indian maiden. But he sweet talks her into picking him up and putting him in her bosom to warm him, and taking him back to her cottage to nurse him back to heath.”

“Oo-er.”

“And she does, and in some weeks, the snake has recovered. One day, she’s carrying him in her bosom, which I suppose had become a habit, and all of the sudden, he bites her. As the poison makes its way to her heart, she asks him why he would do such a thing, when she cared for him and nursed him. And the snake says, ‘You knew I was a snake when you picked me up.’” 

“Oh.” Thomas looked away. “So it’s like that, is it?”

“If I give you a place, and you turn around to decide to blackmail me—again—I’ll hardly be able to say I didn’t know what you were like, will I?” 

_“You have to help me,” Thomas had said, after the colonel in charge of the CCS had found out about the VD scheme, and had wasted no time in transferring Thomas to a Regimental Medical Officer in the trenches of the Somme. “They’re sending me to the Front. I can’t—you’ve seen what happens there.”_

_“I don’t like it any more than you do,” Hartley had answered. “But I can’t do anything about it.”_

_“Please. Jonathan.” He’d looked up at Hartley through his eyelashes, trailing a hand down his chest. “I can’t bear to be separated from you.” Thomas was slipping, Hartley had thought. He would have expected him to have tried that ploy first, instead of admitting he was scared._

_He had pulled away. “I asked the Colonel to give you another chance. He told me you’d already had two second chances, before I arrived here.”_

_“I won’t deny I’ve made some mistakes, but—“_

_“I tried, Thomas. I’m sorry.”_

_“Then try harder!” Thomas had shouted. “They’re sending me off to die! Don’t you even care?”_

_“I care. I don’t know what you think I can do.”_

_A hard, cold mask had fallen over Thomas’s face. “You had better think of something. Because if those orders don’t get changed, I’ll tell. About us. Don’t think I won’t.”_

_He’d been almost struck dumb. Despite having no illusions about Thomas’s honesty, Hartley had been fond of him. He had been as shocked as the girl in the story must have been, when her pet killed her._

_But not as defenseless. “Try it,” he had answered. “I’ll tell them you made it up, because you’re a coward and desperate to save your skin. You’re already a thief, a sneak, and a liar. See who they believe.”_

Then, as now, Thomas put his head down in his arms and wept. 

Thomas, in the end, hadn’t told. A week or two later, Hartley had sent him a letter, saying he was sorry they’d parted on bad terms, and he hoped Thomas was well. There had been no answer, and he had supposed Thomas was probably dead. 

Somehow, he had survived, though. Been given yet another second chance. Hartley couldn’t help but feel that he was getting a second chance, too. But was it really a chance to fix things, or only second chance to make the same mistake over again?

There really hadn’t been anything he could do, once the Colonel found out about Thomas’s scheming. If Hartley had made a mistake, it had been in turning a blind eye as long as he had, for the sake of Thomas’s black market connections and his sinful mouth. If he had done something, disciplined him somehow, maybe Thomas would have learnt his lesson. 

Then again, if even the extreme punishment of being sent to the Front hadn’t taught him anything, there wasn’t much chance that extra duty or confinement to barracks would have done it, either, was there?

He took Thomas’s hand in his and worked off the glove. “Tell me how this happened.” The wound told the story clearly enough; what he wanted to know was what Thomas would say about it. 

“You know what you have to do, when you’re a stretcher bearer on the front?” Thomas challenged him. “After there’s been fighting, you go out into No Man’s Land with your stretcher and your tin hat and your Red Cross armband, and no rifle or anything, and you pick up anybody that’s alive. At first, we’d run up the Red Cross flag and the Hun would stop their guns for a bit, and we’d do the same when it was their turn to send out blokes with stretchers and Red Cross armbands. So that was all right, until some officer came striding along the trench braying about how ‘no unofficial truces will be observed’ and ordered our lads to keep firing. So the next time we put up the Red Cross, of course they weren’t having any of that—would you? It’s not bad enough that you could have a shell land on you at any time, or if you forget where you are and stand up straight you can have your head blown off, now you have to face the machine gun fire and the snipers all by yourself—it’s worse than going over the top; at least there you’re part of a crowd and they might get the one next to you instead of you.” 

“Are you saying that’s how that happened?” Hartley nodded toward Thomas’s hand. 

“No. No. That’s not how. That’s why. We had that bit of decency, you know? Us and the baby-eating Hun, we agreed, without ever talking about it, that you ought to be able to pick up the wounded in peace. But our officers can’t live with that.” He shook his head. “How it happened is, I held a cigarette lighter up over the parapet so a sniper would see it and shoot my hand. Because if I knew if I stayed out there any longer, I’d be killed, and _nobody would help me_.” 

That was the truth, a truth which was obvious to anyone with the depth and breadth of experience of war wounds that Hartley had. The first story was true, too—he’d heard the same thing from officers who’d been at the front lines. Plenty of them thought firing on stretcher-parties barbaric, too, but it was the Army’s official policy. The men couldn’t decide for themselves which of the enemy to fire on¬, and when—“They might all decide to bugger off to the pub for a round of darts, and leave us standing there in the mud with no one to command, if only they realize they can,” one young officer had said. 

How the two stories knit together was less obvious, but Hartley could puzzle it out. Thomas considered himself betrayed by his officers—quite possibly, still betrayed by Hartley himself—and that, as a result, he wasn’t bound by conventional morality. 

Of course, Thomas always had some justification for everything he did. It couldn’t simply be that Thomas had done wrong; always someone else had done him wrong first. Or that the dying wouldn’t miss their cigarettes, so there was no reason not to pinch them, or that if officers couldn’t have their embarrassing illnesses treated off the books, they’d go untreated and carry VD home to their wives and future children. 

To Thomas, this particular excuse might be no different to the others—a paper-thin justification to allow himself to continue feeling that he was being unfairly persecuted. 

But it was different, because this time, Thomas was right. He had been wronged. Not in any special, particular way—plenty of young men had been sent to the Front to be shot at without having repeatedly stolen, lied, and schemed to the point that nobody wanted to protect them; and in that sense, Thomas might have come closer to deserving his fate than others had. But nobody really could deserve the Front. Nobody could deserve the crushing weight of military policy, set by old men who had never seen a trench, which sent thousands of young men to thankless deaths. 

And this was Thomas. Handsome, wickedly funny Thomas, always ready for a cuddle or a quick roll in the hay, and surprisingly sweet once he’d got one. Thomas, who’d been responsible for most of the few bright moments in Captain Hartley’s war, and who Hartley had been careful not to think about too often, because of how things had ended. 

“All right,” Hartley said. “I’ll find a place for you. On one condition. If you turn on me—if you steal from me, blackmail me, connive against me in any way—I’ll write to the War Office and tell them that I realized your wound looked suspicious, and when questioned you admitted it was self-inflicted. You’ll be retroactively dishonourably discharged—which means you’ll never find work again—and likely sent to prison, to boot. And I won’t be sorry.” He was fairly sure he would be, but it was better—for everyone—if Thomas thought he wouldn’t.

Thomas gulped, and nodded. 

“Are we agreed that’s fair?”

He nodded again. “Yes. Perfectly fair.”

“All right. We leave on the ten o’clock train day after tomorrow. Will they let you stay up at the big house two more nights?”

“I expect so,” Thomas said in a small voice. 

“Good. Then I’ll see you at the station.” Standing up from the crate where he’d sat down, he extended his hand to Thomas. At the last moment, Hartley turned the handshake into a rough embrace. Thomas stood stiffly for a moment, then relaxed into his arms. Hartley pressed a brisk kiss to his temple, thumped him on the back, and stepped away. “I’m glad you’re all right.” 

#

That evening Thomas had barely taken his usual place at supper before Mr. Carson looked at him disapprovingly and said, “I see you’re still with us, Thomas. The time is soon coming when I’ll be forced to inquire as to whether you have any future prospects.”

Word must have gotten round about the demise of his fledgling dry-goods business. The question would have stung, had he still been feeling as low about things as he had that afternoon. “As it happens, today I ran into a doctor who remembers me from the war. He’s reopening his private practice, and in consideration of how invaluable I was to him in France, he offered me a position. I leave the day after tomorrow.” 

“Very good,” Carson said. “I’m sure we all wish you the best.”

“What kind of position?” Daisy asked. 

That particular detail had not been settled, and if Thomas were forced to be honest, he’d have to say something like, _un-trusted charity case_. Fortunately, he was not so forced. Still, word might get back to Downton of how he made out—Captain Hartley’d mentioned that he’d been in the village visiting Major Clarkson—so he had better not lie outright. “Well, I was his batman and orderly in the war. He’s not sure whether he wants me more as valet or to help out in the practice. Maybe a bit of both, until he gets his household sorted out.” He tried for a casual shrug. “It would be a shame to waste all my medical training and experience, just being a footman or something like that again.” That ought to make clear that, while the household of a village doctor was sure to be less grand than Downton, he considered the position superior. 

Carson cleared his throat forbiddingly, but Mrs. Hughes said, “Well, I hope you’ll find it suits you, whatever it turns out to be.”

“Thank you. I’m sure it will.” 

“What kind of household is it, though?” asked one of the hall-boys. “A doctor, that’s almost trade, isn’t it?”

“No more so than the law,” Thomas said sharply. “And that’s a perfectly acceptable profession for a gentleman, wouldn’t you say so, Mr. Carson?” 

Carson could hardly disagree with him, given that Downton’s heir was a solicitor. It gave Thomas some pleasure to note that he looked as if the reply, “Indeed,” was choked out of him. 

After the meal, O’Brien headed for the back door for a smoke, glancing an invitation at him. Thomas went, feeling almost nostalgic. It might be the last cigarette he’d smoke in the Downton kitchen garden. 

Apart from all the ones tomorrow, anyway. And maybe a quick on in the morning before the train. 

“Things sure turned round for you quick enough,” O’Brien said as she lit up. 

“You know me; I always land on my feet.” 

“This position, wouldn’t happen to be on your stomach, would it?” 

That was unusually direct, even for her. “Why, yes, we did happen to become rather close during the war, now that you ask.”

“Don’t get soppy about it, is all I’m saying. You work for him, same as anywhere else. You stop being convenient, you’ll be out on your ear, whether it’s any fault of your own or not.”

“Why, Miss O’Brien, I didn’t know you cared.”

She huffed and flicked her ash. “You’ve one less thing to worry about than a girl in the same situation, but you still have to watch out for yourself. No one else will.”

“I know my own way around this sort of thing,” he said tartly. Then, grudgingly, “Thanks.” It wasn’t too many people cared enough about him to offer advice, even if it was advice he already knew. At one time, he might have gotten a bit soppy over the prospect of having a place in the household of a lover, but that was a long time ago. Before the war. 

Taking a long draw on her cigarette, O’Brien said, “What’s he like, then?”

He couldn’t exactly say, _He used to hold me and call me his Tom-kitten_. Or _Even when he’s telling me off, he still sounds like he likes me. I never knew anyone could do that, before._ That would definitely sound like he was getting soppy. “Reasonably handsome. Not too stuck on himself, as officers go. A bit inconveniently moral.” About everything except buggering orderlies, that is. “But not too bad, really.”

“The household’s bound to be a step down from Downton.”

“Several, I think,” Thomas said. “But I’m not exactly brimming over with options, am I?” He flexed his injured hand in its glove. “I’ll be all right.”

O’Brien looked at him sharply. “You aren’t thinking you have to lie down for this bloke to keep yourself off the street.” 

“No. No. It’s not like that. I like him well enough.” 

“All right, then.” She nodded. “And if it doesn’t work out, you’ll write me. If I tell her ladyship that this doctor propositioned you for immoral purposes, she’ll have to help you find another place, particularly after I remind her how you’ve been at Downton since you were a lad.” 

“You can’t tell her ladyship _that_ ,” Thomas protested. “It’d be…indelicate.”

“Women know more than you lot think about what goes on,” she answered. 

He supposed O’Brien would be a better judge of that than he was. “All right—thanks—but if we do that, it’ll have to be in strictest confidence. He’s promised dire repercussions if I expose him.”

She nodded approvingly. “That’s a good detail. He’s got you frightened for your character as well as your virtue, the brute.”

“No, I mean, he really has,” Thomas explained. “He knows about some things I did during the war that would look bad, if they got out. I tell on him, he tells on me.”

O’Brien gave him a sharp look. “And you’re sure you want to go to this place?”

“Yes.” She still looked doubtful, so he elaborated. “He’s not an idiot, and he doesn’t under-estimate me. I like that.” 

She snorted, tossing down her fag-end and grinding it out with the toe of her shoe. “You _are_ getting soppy about it.”

#

She must be getting soft in her old age, but Sarah couldn’t help worrying about Thomas. She didn’t like the sound of this Doctor Hartley swooping in when he’d just suffered a business disappointment, and making an offer that surely wasn’t to Thomas’s advantage. Given time, there was a chance she could have worked Lady Grantham around to convincing her husband to tell Carson to give Thomas his old job back. No chance of that now, unfortunately—now that the stupid boy had accepted the new position, doubtless her ladyship would consider it poaching to try to retain him. That sort wouldn’t dream of letting a servant hear a number of offers and choose among them— _stealing servants_ , they called it. 

Still, she could lay the groundwork for the story they had worked out. As she helped Lady Cora dress for bed, Sarah took pains to seem just a bit distracted. Taking up the hairbrush, she held it loosely in her hands for a moment, staring into space, before turning to her work with a soft sigh.

“Is there something wrong, O’Brien?”

“Nothing to bother you with, my lady,” she said, beginning to brush the thick, glossy hair. 

“You can tell me, if you like.”

“Well…it’s just Thomas, my lady. He’s gone and gotten himself a place with one of the doctors from that hospital in France.”

Lady Cora smiled into the mirror. “But that sounds quite suitable.”

“I suppose it is, my lady. I just have a funny feeling about it.” 

“I know you’re very fond of Thomas, but I think he’s shown he can take care of himself.”

She tried another sigh. “He’s made his share of mistakes, my lady, I admit that. But…” She hesitated artfully. “I get the impression he feels there’s something not quite right about it, but he had to take it. The post-war employment situation being what it is.” 

Lady Cora turned around. “Not quite right how?”

“I couldn’t say, my lady. It was just a feeling.” Time to bring this to a close. “I’m sure I’m just being silly.” She considered the next phrase carefully—it wouldn’t do to lay it on too thick. “He’s been at Downton so long, and lost his poor mother just before he came…I suppose I almost feel like he’s my own, that’s all.” And wouldn’t Thomas laugh himself sick if he heard her saying that? Ungrateful little sod. 

“Oh, O’Brien.” Lady Cora cocked her head to one side, spaniel-like, and touched Sarah’s hand. “I know how hard it is to see them leave the nest…especially if you think they might be making a mistake.” Sarah could tell she was thinking of her own daughters. “I’m sure he’ll write, and if there’s anything Downton can do….”

“Thank you, my lady; you’re very kind.” 

#

By the time Thomas left Downton, he had almost succeeded in convincing himself that his new place matched up to the airs he was putting on. He imagined himself accompanying Captain Hartley to medical consultations in fine drawing rooms, introduced as, “My right-hand man, Mr. Barrow.” Exactly what he’d do during these consultations—which would not involve blood, vomitus, or anything of the kind—was left vague in his fantasies. Back at the house, he’d be instantly placed a head above the other servants—practically a member of the family, really, but as it was a small staff, he’d condescend to decant the wine and oversee the polishing of the silver. All of the others would be madly jealous, but too professional and well-trained to show it. 

Not even having to walk to the station, lugging the single suitcase that contained everything he owned in the world, could dampen his spirits. Doctor Hartley smiled as Thomas approached him on the platform. “There you are, Thomas. The train’s just coming in.”

“Yes, sir,” he agreed, glancing down the track. 

“Here’s your ticket.” 

Thomas glanced at it. Third class. Well, that was only to be expected. 

“The train goes right by Bishopthorpe, but it doesn’t stop, so we’ll be met at York.” 

“Very good, sir.” The train was pulling up now. “Will I see you to your carriage?” he asked, with an inviting smile and a hint of raised eyebrow. If it was a private compartment, they might have a chance to renew their acquaintance. 

“No, and the baggage has already been seen to. I’ll see you there.”

Thomas managed to swallow his disappointment, and kept his spirits up even through getting off the train in what struck him as a grim little manufacturing town, with none of the advantages of a proper city like London, nor of the countryside. The station was bigger and more crowded than he would have expected, though. The Crawleys had no reason on Earth to go to York, so he had never been, either. 

“There you are,” Doctor Hartley said, once he’d found him on the platform. “Here, you see about the luggage.” He pressed the claim tickets and some money into Thomas’s hand. “And I’ll find Granby and the motor, as you won’t know what either of them looks like.”

Retrieving the luggage worked more or less the same way as it did in London, at least, but once he’d got it, he had to wander around the station trying to sort out where Doctor Hartley might be. For a moment, he almost missed Carson ordering him and the other footmen about like a sergeant-major. There was something to be said for not having to figure every little thing out on your own.

At last, he found Doctor Hartley. The motor he was standing next to was all right—an older model, and small, but clean and well-kept. 

The driver was another story. He was an old man in stained overalls with a face liked a dried-apple doll. It was all right that he was old, Thomas thought hastily. The absence of a handsome chauffer meant nothing to him, anyway, since he had Dr. Hartley. But the way the man was turned out was a sure sign of a house with no pride. 

“Ah, Thomas,” Hartley said. “You can just throw those in back there—Granby, this is Thomas, my new man. Granby’s the gardener…groom…general factotum.” 

The gardener, of course. Thomas sighed inwardly with relief as he stowed the suitcases. The proper chauffer had gone off to the war, probably, and Doctor Hartley hadn’t had a chance to find a new one, since he’d just been de-mobbed. 

“Will you be takin’ the reins on the way back, Doc Hartley?” Granby asked. “I’ve kept ‘er polished up for you, but I ‘aven’t got the knack of that clutch yet, I don’t mind telling you.” He shook his head dolefully. 

“Of course. And I appreciate your making the sacrifice of driving the motor down,” Hartley added, getting behind the wheel while Granby got into the back seat, both of them acting as though this were all perfectly normal. 

Thomas hesitated over whether he ought to ride in back with the gardener, or up front with his employer, until Hartley leaned across the front seat to open the door on the left side. “Are you coming, Thomas?”

He scrambled up. As they neared the village, Hartley began pointing out sites of interest—mostly cottages and farms where he had treated patients before the war. “Worst case of scabies I’ve ever seen,” or “That’s the Nutall house—good God, Granby, is that enormous child playing on the swing little David?”

“’deed it is, Doc,” Granby said affably, from the back seat.

“He was the last baby I delivered before I was called up. Look how big he is.” Hartley slowed, presumably so that Thomas could look. 

“Appears to be a very healthy child, sir,” Thomas said, for lack of any better response. 

The road curved toward a square, three-storey brick house. That must be where they were headed. Ten like it could have fit inside Downton Abbey, but it was more than adequate for a bachelor household. 

“Middlethorpe Hall,” Doctor Hartley said. “The Barlows. He has gout, she has sick headaches. Lovely people.” 

Not his house, then. 

“Nearly there,” Hartley said. 

Moments later, the car drew up to a stone house. Three stories, plus attics, but five like it could have fit inside Middlethorpe. A plaque hung by the front door—Jonathan Hartley, Royal College of Physicians. Grouped on the tiny front lawn were what Thomas had a sinking feeling were the entire staff: a dumpy woman in a cook’s apron, with a ring of keys at her belt; a housemaid in a blue frock with her cap askew; and a tall, plump, and red-faced girl in a dirty apron and boots that Thomas could only imagine she had stolen from a farm laborer. 

They were lined up at least, like the staff of a proper house, until they caught sight of the car, at which time they started waving and calling out. The housemaid jumped up and down; Thomas thought the scullery maid might have been trying to do the same, only she couldn’t get those boots off the ground. 

They all crowded around as Hartley stopped the car and got out, not waiting long enough for either Thomas or Granby to open the door for him. 

“It’s wonderful to see everyone looking so well—now, now, don’t weep, Mrs. Poysner.”

The woman blotted her eyes with a corner of her apron. “I’m sorry, Doctor—it’s just, thinking of how we might have never seen you again.”

“Yes, of course. So many good men were lost. We must never forget how lucky we are.” 

While the others were thus occupied, Thomas got out of the car and started unloading the luggage. 

“Oh, Thomas, leave that a moment. Come here and meet everyone.” He took Thomas by the arm and dragged him over to face the motley collection of servants. “This is Thomas Barrow; he was an orderly, and my batman for part of the war. He’ll be helping out in the practice, and around the house. We’ll sort out exactly what this means for everyone’s duties later on, but—I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear it, Granby—he drives.”

There was general laughter about that. 

“And, Thomas, here’s Mrs. Poysner, cook-housekeeper; Dulcie, housemaid; and Dinah, kitchen maid. And Granby, you’ve already met.” 

“Pleased to meet you all,” Thomas managed to say. It ought to have been the butler introducing the new valet to the rest of the household, but clearly, there wasn’t a butler.

“Don’t you sound ‘alf posh,” Dulcie said, sounding impressed. 

“Our household isn’t quite what he’s used to, but I’m sure he’ll settle in well enough. Now, let’s see…Granby, would you mind putting the car away? You shouldn’t have to take it out of first gear. And Thomas can take the suitcases up…Mrs. Poysner, did you have a chance to air out a room for him?”

“Yes, Doctor. I wasn’t sure, but I thought the small bedroom at the end of the ‘all on the second floor. It didn’t seem right to have a young, single man sleeping right next to the girls, and this way, if you need him for a medical call in the night, you won’t have to go up to the top of the ‘ouse to fetch him.” She twisted her apron in her hands and blinked in a rabbitlike fashion. 

“Yes, I think you did quite right.” To Thomas, he added, “Mine’s at the top of the stairs, you can’t miss it, and you’ll find your room between the bathroom and the linen cupboard. Now, Mrs. Posyner, is there any chance of a cup of tea?” He took a step toward the house, and the women-servants flocked to precede him there.

“Of course, Doctor! I’ve made some cakes, too, and sandwiches if you want them…your dinner’s fixed for half-seven, but you must be famishing after all day on the train. Thomas!” she shouted over her employer’s head from halfway up the steps. “Come to the kitchen once you’ve shifted those cases; I’m sure you could do with a cuppa.”

“Thank you,” Thomas managed to say. Hartley didn’t object to, or even seem to notice, her appalling lack of decorum. 

He managed to get the cases through the narrow front hall without banging them against the walls more than once or twice. The door to the back staircase stuck, and the hinges groaned, leading him to wonder if the housemaid was in the habit of traipsing up and down the front staircase with her mops and things. It seemed a distinct possibility. 

He paused on the landing, unexpected tears prickling his eyes. _Write and let me know how it is_ , O’Brien had said when they snatched a last smoke before his train. What in God’s name could he say? _Dear Miss O’Brien. I’ve become dogsbody in a shack staffed entirely by madwomen. I swear to God I’d be happy as a footman forever if I could only come home._

But Downton wasn’t home, for all that he’d lived there since he was twelve years old. With an effort, he pulled himself together and went the rest of the way up. 

He placed his case inside the door of his room, and went on to inspect Doctor Hartley’s. With any luck, he’d be spending more time there than in his own. It was a big, bright room, very simply furnished, but with a big, wide bed that Thomas approved of wholeheartedly. Hartley’s wardrobe ran mostly to sack suits, with just one set of dinner dress, but after seeing the house, that was hardly a surprise. Most of the things were good quality, at least, apart from a few of the older neckties. 

He got down to business, unpacking Hartley’s cases. The contents were mostly uniforms, which he carefully brushed out and hung. Hartley wouldn’t be wearing them much, but there might be a regimental dinner or something, and Thomas didn’t know yet where infrequently-used clothes were stored. 

There was one civilian suit; he noted a stain and a loose button on the jacket, and set it aside to deal with later. Collars and socks and things he sorted into their appropriate drawers, tidying as he went. All of his handkerchiefs wanted ironing; Thomas put those with the jacket. 

He was looking for shoe trees—Hartley didn’t seem to own any, which couldn’t possibly be right—when Dulcie came thundering, as he’d feared, up the main stairs. 

“Mrs. Poysner wants to know, did you get lost?” she asked, standing in Hartley’s bedroom door and gawping at him. 

“No,” he said. “I’m unpacking.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what valets do.”

“You can have your tea first. Doctor isn’t as strict as all that.”

“I may not have much, but I have _standards_ ,” Thomas muttered into the depths of the wardrobe. 

“What?”

“Nothing. I was finished anyway.” He gathered up the jacket and handkerchiefs. 

“What’s that?”

“Some things that want seeing to.” He headed for the back stairs. 

“We can use the other stairs,” Dulcie said, trailing after him. “These ones are so dark and narrow, we don’t half break our necks going up and down them.” 

Thomas ignored her, and continued downstairs.

There was no proper servants’ hall, either, just one end of the kitchen worktable. Granby was already sitting there, swilling a cup of tea. 

“Sit, sit,” Mrs. Poysner said, pushing him toward a chair and thumping a thick crockery cup down in front of him. A plate of roughly-cut sandwiches joined it, followed by some slightly misshapen cakes. “These came out a little uneven, but they taste just the same. Go on and eat—never mind me name, it won’t poison you.” She chuckled a little at her own joke, before bustling off to do something incomprehensible with a chicken. 

Thomas would have liked to reply with something biting, but he _was_ hungry, and the cakes and sandwiches, once sampled, proved quite good. Mrs. Poysner knew the cooking part of her job, it seemed, at least. 

“There, now.” She paused in bustling around the kitchen to pat him on the shoulder. “We’ll soon have you fed up; you’re too thin. Did they even feed you, at that bloody war?”

The question was evidently rhetorical, since she was on her way back to the stove before she finished uttering it. Thomas took the opportunity to brush away the flour she’d deposited on his jacket. 

After Granby took his leave, Thomas cleared away the tea things and wiped down the table—since it didn’t look like anyone else was planning to do it—and attempted to get Dulcie to tell him where he might find a needle and thread. 

“What do you want that for?”

“To sew on a button.”

“I could do it.”

“It’s my job.” 

“What’s this, now?” Mrs. Poysner interrupted. 

“’e wants a needle and thread,” Dulcie said. “So’s ‘e can sew on a button.” She sounded like she thought that was funny, for some reason. 

“Then get me sewing box from me room, girl. You know where it is.”

She scampered off. When she returned, Thomas overheard Mrs. Poysner telling her how “Some men come ‘ome from the war a bit peculiar. We’ve got to try an’ make him feel welcome, don’t we?”

Thomas managed to keep himself occupied until dinner with sewing, ironing, polishing, and casting disapproving looks at Dulcie, who spent most of the same period paging indolently through a magazine. Only when Dinah, at Mrs. Poysner’s direction, began laying crockery plates around the kitchen table did Dulcie get up and start slopping food into china serving dishes and piling them any-which-way onto a tray. 

“What in _God’s name_ do you think you’re doing?” he asked in horror, as she tossed a handful of cutlery onto the tray as if it were pickup sticks. 

“I’m getting the things ready to take in to Doctor in the dining room. What do you think I’m doing?”

“No,” he said. “You’re not.” Edging her aside, he started putting things to rights. Dulcie would have to carry the side vegetables into the dining room, since there was no one else in the household even halfway fit to be seen at table, but at least he could have them centered on the tray, and with the proper serving cutlery placed with the proper dish. 

“I need another tray for the meat,” he told her. 

“We always just use one,” she said. “It’s a bit ‘eavy, but it saves walking back and forth.”

“And makes you look like an orange seller lugging her wares around Covent Garden, I’m sure. Is there another tray?”

She found one. It wasn’t polished, but—he glanced at the kitchen clock—there was no time to do it now. The only thing Thomas could do was cover it with a napkin and hope not to die of shame. 

He glanced down at himself and adjusted his cuffs. He’d never waited at table in a sack suit before, but that couldn’t be helped, and at least he was neat. “Straighten your cap,” he told Dulcie. She was still wearing her day dress, as well, but clearly, that was how they did things here. 

She did so, saying, “Doctor ‘asn’t got any company to dinner, you know.”

“I should hope not.” If there were guests to see this shambles, he really would die of shame. 

Carson, Thomas thought, would have fainted dead away on the spot if he saw the way the table was set. He was still straightening things out when Doctor Hartley came in. 

“Ah, Thomas. I hope you’re settling in well?”

“Yes, sir, thank you. Everyone’s been very kind.”

Dulcie piped up. “’e’s been workin’ ‘ard already, and this ‘is first day.”

Thomas kicked her in the ankle. 

“Ow!” She looked at him resentfully.

They served the meal, Thomas pouring the wine that had been left—in the bottle—on the sideboard. 

“Is there anything else, sir?” Dulcie asked. 

“No, thank you,” Hartley said. She curtsied and started back for the kitchen. To Thomas, who had been about to post himself by the sideboard, he added, “You can go on too, have your dinner while it’s hot.”

“Very good, sir.” 

Downstairs, Mrs. Poysner was dishing up the same stewed chicken and vegetables they had just served upstairs. Thomas had heard things were sometimes done that way in smaller households. It meant a slightly higher standard of catering, on average, than they usually had in the servants’ hall at Downton—and a much lower standard above-stairs. His stomach may have approved, but his pride didn’t. 

His pride didn’t think much of sitting down at the same table with the gardener and the kitchen maid, either, but since the choice was evidently to either do that or starve, he did. 

“What do you mean, kicking me in the dining room?” Dulcie demanded of him as they sat down. 

“Haven’t you ever heard of not speaking unless you’re spoken to?”

“Doctor was speaking to us,” she said.

“He was speaking to me.” 

“We’re really not so formal here, Thomas,” Mrs. Poysner said. “You’ll get used to it soon enough. But you oughtn’t to be going round kicking people, no matter what they’ve done.” 

“I didn’t kick her. I…nudged her. With my foot.”

“You oughtn’t to be doing that, either,” Mrs. Poysner said. “Here, have some more potatoes.” She ladled them onto his plate with a heavy hand. 

“Thank you.” He managed a stiff smile. The incident wouldn’t have been a problem if Dulcie had had the sense not to yelp about it, but since she had, there might be questions, and he didn’t want anyone tittle-tattling to Doctor Hartley. “I’m sorry, Dulcie. I may have picked up a bad habit or two in the war. Supervising the junior orderlies, you know, and some of them are rougher sorts. Won’t listen until you’ve shoved them around some. I’m sorry,” he said again. 

“It’s all right,” Mrs. Poysner said. “And we’ll say no more about it. Doctor’s looking well, isn’t he?” she said firmly.

They discussed their general agreement on that subject for a few moments. 

“How was it for ‘im, during the war?” Mrs. Poysner asked Thomas. “’e wrote, a few times, but ‘e didn’t say much.”

“It was hard for all of us, I think,” Thomas said carefully, conscious of the opportunity to establish himself as the expert on Doctor Hartley’s war experience. “The hospital was out of range of the guns, but with wounded coming in every day, the fighting never seemed far away. And there was so little he and the other doctors could do, for so many of them, I’m sure it wore on him. As it would on anyone.”

They all nodded solemnly, wide-eyed. 

“At least ‘e came back, though,” Dinah said.

“And thank God for that,” Mrs. Poysner said. 

#

“Will there any anything else, Doctor, before we turn in?” Mrs. Poysner asked from the doorway of the sitting room.

“No, I’ll be going up myself shortly.” He set aside the casebook he’d been reviewing. “Is everything all right with the household?”

“Yes, sir. The accounts want going over, but nothing that can’t wait until you’ve settled back in.”

“Good. And…Thomas?”

“He’ll be all right, the poor lamb, once he’s had a chance to get used to us.”

Hartley couldn’t quite credit anyone characterizing Thomas as a “poor lamb” after a short acquaintance, and considered warning her off, or inquiring more deeply into precisely how Thomas had presented himself. But if he’d managed to make a good impression, it would hardly be fair to speak against him. 

“Has his own opinions about how things ought to be done, mind you,” she added. _That_ sounded more like the Thomas he knew. “But he’s a hard worker.”

“Dulcie said the same thing.” True enough, shirking his duties was one fault Thomas _didn’t_ have. His willingness to work to maintain his high standards was perhaps his most admirable quality—or the most admirable one that could be spoken of. “And that was my impression of him in the war, as well.” He hesitated. “I want him to do well here. So if there’s any difficulty, however small, I’d like you to bring it to me, so that we can address it. It won’t be bearing tales, just helping him make a good start of things here. All right?”

She hesitated. 

So he’d done something already. “What is it?”

“It were nothing, really, and he apologized right prettily, and I said we’d say no more about it.”

“I don’t like to ask you to break your word, but now that I know there was something, I think you had better tell me. If you don’t, I might imagine something worse.”

“ _Apparently_ he kicked Dulcie when he thought she was being cheeky in the dining room.”

Hartley remembered Dulcie’s yelp. He’d wondered what that had been about. “I hope you told him that if he has any concerns about Dulcie’s behavior, he should bring them to you and not take matters into his own hands. Or feet, as the case may be.”

“I didn’t,” she admitted. “I just told him he oughtn’t kick people. But I will tell him.”

“No, I’ll speak with him.” He would have to sort out exactly what Thomas’s place in the household was, at any rate. “Good night, Mrs. Poysner, and thank you for such a warm homecoming.”

“Goodnight, sir, and we’re that pleased to have you back.”

After waiting just long enough to avoid meeting the maids on the stairs, Hartley went up to his room. Moments later, there was a soft tap at his door, and Thomas let himself in. “It’s just me,” he said, and started to help Hartley out of his jacket, adding an unnecessary but welcome caress to his shoulders.

“So it is.” Hartley let Thomas undo his tie and slip off his shoes, but when Thomas, in the midst of undoing Hartley’s shirt buttons, leaned in to nuzzle his neck, he cleared his throat and said, “Before this goes any further…”

Thomas backed off with a sulky expression. “What?” 

Hartley knew that if he spoke to Thomas as he’d promised Mrs. Poysner he would do, Thomas would very likely take his leave after doing no more than Hartley could decently ask of him as his employer, whereas if he put off the confrontation, they would go on to have a very enjoyable evening indeed. Unfortunately, that was precisely why Hartley had to speak now. Not to do so would be too much like tricking Thomas into giving what could only honourably be taken if it were offered freely. 

“I just want to make clear that if you have concerns about the behavior of either of the maids, you should carry those concerns to Mrs. Poysner; she’s the one in charge of them.”

Thomas lifted his chin. “Pardon me, sir, for trying to raise the standard of service around here.”

“Thomas, if you tell me that at Downton Abbey it is customary to kick housemaids, I shall not believe you.” 

He looked away. “I didn’t kick anybody.”

“Who’s lying to me, then? Mrs. Poysner?” Thomas at least had the sense not to answer back to that. “Thomas, I pray that one day you will be able to get through a single day without doing anything outrageous. Clearly, this is not that day.”

Thomas clenched his jaw. “Sir.”

“Apart from that, I understand you’ve done very well.” 

“I try, sir,” Thomas said, without a hint of insinuation, damn it. 

“I know you do.” He undid the rest of his shirt buttons on his own, and Thomas brought him a dressing gown. 

“Will there be anything else, sir?” Thomas asked, making it plain that a suggestion that they return to kissing would be most unwelcome. 

“No, I’ll manage from here. Good night, Thomas.”

“Goodnight, sir.”

He left, straight-backed, looking like an offended cat, while Hartley wondered what in God’s name he’d been thinking, bringing a disaster like Thomas into his calm and pleasant household, just because he wanted him.

#

Thomas pushed open the window in his bedroom and lit a cigarette, adding a mental postscript to the letter he’d written O’Brien in his head. _And Hartley is more interested in talking about whether or not I’ve kicked a housemaid than in taking me to bed._

God, he wished O’Brien were here. Or that he was there. Not that she’d give him much sympathy. She’d probably tell him it served him right for getting caught. 

But then, once he’d told her how he came to be caught, she’d work out a way for him to get back at that spiteful bitch, Mrs. Poysner. Saying _We’ll say no more about it_ , then tittle-tattling to Hartley the first chance she got. Backstabbing snake in the grass. 

Try as he might, he couldn’t come up with a plan on his own. Maybe if he knew more about the household…what her vulnerabilities were…. As it was, he’d just have to keep a sharp eye out for an opportunity, that’s all.

After tossing and turning all night, it seemed that he’d just gotten off to sleep when someone started clobbering his door. “Thomas? Are you decent?” 

_No, I am most definitely not_. But he was wearing his pyjamas, so he got out of bed and opened the door to Dinah. “What is it?”

“Only we weren’t sure when we should wake you up.”

“What time is it?”

“’alf past six.”

That sounded about right. “What time does Himself get woken up?”

“Doctor, you mean? Seven.”

“ _Bloody buggering hell_.” Thomas slammed the door and started throwing on his clothes. 

By the time he’d washed, shaved, and run downstairs, he’d composed himself enough to tell Dinah, “I think it would be better in future if you woke me at six.” 

“All right,” she said, looking up from the porridge she was stirring. “You’ve no call to swear at me about it.”

“And by the way, you ought to be calling me ‘Mr. Barrow.’ Valets get called Mister.” With that, he turned to check on the breakfast things.

He was careful to be on his best professional behavior waking and dressing Hartley, lest he be accused of doing something outrageous before the day was even fully begun. 

“After breakfast, we’ll go down to my consulting rooms,” Hartley said as Thomas offered him a selection of neckties. “Mrs. Poysner’s let the village know I won’t be seeing patients until Monday, barring emergencies, but I’ll show you where everything is, and we should inventory supplies. Then tomorrow you can take the motor in to York and pick up anything that’s wanting.” 

“Very good, sir.” If Thomas were employed by a gentleman, doubtless that gentleman would be spending the day “seeing to the business of the estate,” a process that was almost as mysterious to Thomas now as it had been when he’d first arrived at Downton as a boy. Not even valets got to see whatever it was that passed for a day’s work in a gentleman’s life, and footmen certainly didn’t. But he knew plenty about what a doctor’s work was like. “Just like old times, minus the nastier bits.”

Hartley smiled. “Yes—and thank God for that.” 

In fact, it turned out to be more like old times than either of them expected. Shortly after luncheon, the front doorbell rang. Thomas answered it to find a farmer. “Is t’doctor ‘ere? It’s Alf, Alf Graham. ‘e fell in t’pig pen, sow savaged him something terrible. I knows ‘e didn’t mean to start his work just yet, doctor I mean, ‘im being just back from the war, but….”

“I’ll tell him at once,” Thomas agreed. Moments later they were in the motor, Thomas driving while Hartley directed him to the farm in question, and the farmer riding in the back. 

Thomas didn’t have much experience with pigs before they’d been turned into pork chops and bacon; he would have thought, if he’d given them any thought at all, that they were sort of slow and comical. But Alf could have been torn apart by shrapnel, the way he looked, and his wounds were coated in a mixture of mud and blood that could have come straight from the trenches. 

Hartley took off his jacket. “Mrs. Graham, we’ll need a great deal of hot water, a basin, and some clean cloths. Thomas, let’s move him over by the window so I can see what I’m doing….”

They worked flat-out for the next hour, cleaning the wounds, packing them with antiseptic, bandaging. The man who’d come to fetch them—Alf’s brother, Thomas gathered—was pressed into service to hold him still; Hartley didn’t want to risk giving him morphine. Halfway through the ordeal, Alf lapsed mercifully into unconsciousness.

The worst of it finished, Hartley washed his hands, then put his fingers to Alf’s throat. “His pulse is very weak.”

“What’s that mean?” the wife asked. 

“He’s lost a great deal of blood. I think we had better perform a transfusion.”

“What’s that when it’s at home?” 

“We’ll give Alf a bit of someone else’s blood. A close relative is usually best—Bert, do you mind?”

“’e’s me brother, of course I don’t mind.”

Thomas got the apparatus ready, while Hartley explained the procedure to Bert and Mrs. Alf. Thomas knew all about it—in the war, he’d been used for transfusions all the time, after Captain Hartley found out he had the sort of blood that could be given to anybody without making them ill. It was really pretty simple, although credulous yokels tended to get nervy about it. 

Bert, in fact, was looking pretty pale as Hartley explained things, and when he saw his blood going through the tube to his brother, he turned green and lurched forward in his chair. Thomas hurried to shove a basin under him in case he got sick; that sometimes happened. “It’s better not to look,” he advised. “Mrs. Graham, do you think you could get Bert here a cup of strong, sweet tea? That’ll help keep his strength up.”

“Good thinking,” Hartley said when she had bustled off. “It’ll be good for her to have something to do other than sit and worry.”

Bert started to look over at Hartley, then seemed to realize that would mean looking at the transfusion tube again, and turned his head back toward the wall. “Will ‘e be all right, then, our Alf?”

“It’s early to say,” Hartley answered. “The real danger is infection, with all the…contaminate matter in the wounds.” 

That was a pretty delicate way of saying, “Pig shit,” Thomas supposed. 

“We’ll just have to wait and see, I’m afraid. But he’s a strong fellow; that’s a point in his favor.”

“It’s a damn thing, coming through t’war only to snuff—I mean, only to have summat like this ‘appen in his own yard.”

“It’s rotten luck,” Hartley agreed. 

Thomas thought that they would leave after the transfusion was finished—back in France, they would have been rushed off to the next patient ages ago—but to his surprise, Doctor Hartley settled in for the duration, staying by the bedside even when Bert took himself off, saying that as he had to do both his work and Alf’s, he had better shift it. Somehow, Hartley seemed to know just when to sit in silence, when to offer some reassuring remark about Alf’s condition, when to try to take Mrs. Alf’s mind off things by asking about village gossip or the business of the farm. 

Thomas didn’t know how he did it, and the only comparison he could make was that it was like how a very good butler always knew what was going on in the house, knew what would be needed before it was asked for. It was strange, seeing that kind of professional competence in the man he worked for.

Them at Downton would laugh if they could see him now. Thomas himself didn’t understand how it could make him proud, to serve a man who was good at his job, given that it meant he was reduced to serving a man who _had_ a job. But it did.

#

Hartley’s first thought, when the shrilling of the ‘phone woke him, was that Alf must have taken a turn for the worse. He pulled on his dressing gown and hurried down to answer it, but the ringing stopped just as he reached the foot of the stairs. He heard Thomas’s voice. “Doctor Hartley’s residence. No, this is his valet. Is it an emergency?” Catching sight of Hartley, he said, “Yes, ma’am, sorry for interrupting you, but he’s just here.”

Thomas gave over the instrument to Hartley, saying, “The vicar’s wife; he’s ill.”

“Yes, Mrs. Lewis, Doctor Hartley speaking.”

“Doctor, Mr. Lewis has taken a strong fever. I’m sorry to trouble you in the middle of the night—I had thought it could wait until your surgery hours this coming morning, but he’s begun having difficulty breathing.”

“It’s no trouble. I’ll come directly, as soon as I’ve dressed.”

By the time Hartley reached the vicarage, the vicar was hunched over, gasping as though he’d been in a mustard-gas attack. “He can’t breathe at all if he lies down,” Mrs. Lewis told him. 

Hartley took out his stethoscope. Before he could even begin listening to the vicar’s chest, a paroxysm of coughing struck him, and blood bloomed on the coverlet beneath his head. 

By daybreak, he was dead. 

When Hartley and Thomas returned to the house, Mrs. Poysner met them with news of three other households that had been struck by fever. 

“At least have some tea and a bite of toast before you go,” she pleaded, beckoning to Dulcie, who had those items on a tray. “It won’t do anyone any good if you catch your death.”

She was right. Yesterday had been Sunday, making it likely that most of the village had been exposed to the vicar’s illness. He took one cup, and motioned for Thomas to take the other. “Thank you, Mrs. Poysner; it’s bound to be a long day.”

That bit of breakfast snatched in the front hall was the last moment’s rest either of them had all day. Whenever they were in a house that was on the telephone, Hartley or Thomas rang back to the practice, where Mrs. Poysner told them of new cases that had been reported. The fever struck rich and poor alike, taking them to the rudest cottages and prosperous farms, to maids’ rooms and to the bedchamber of the Squire’s daughter at Middlethorpe. For each case, Hartley could only recommend the same, mostly futile treatments—bed rest, fluids, cooling baths and aspirin to bring the fever down. Some patients improved slightly with these measures; some declined quickly, as the vicar had; many stagnated. To prevent infection, Hartley and Thomas wore gauze masks, and washed their hands so often they were red and raw. 

There was little time to sleep. Hartley was almost grateful, because when he did sleep, he dreamed of the war hospital in France, only the patients there were not the anonymous young soldiers he had in reality treated there, but villagers he had known for years, women and children, some whose births he had attended. Gassed, blown apart by shrapnel, rotted from the extremities inward by gangrene, they suffered even more in his nightmares than they did from the real disease. 

Hartley knew why it was he was having these dreams. Part of it was his body remembering the last time he’d been worked so hard, driven to exhaustion, barely having time to eat. But even more than that, it was the sense of futility, that he was just as helpless before this disease as he had been in France. Just as overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the stricken, just as ill-equipped to offer any genuinely effective treatment. 

On the third night of the onslaught, he woke from a particularly horrific example where little Davy Nuttall appeared in front of him with all four limbs blown off, dressed in khaki and crying for his mummy. 

Feeling that he never wanted to sleep again, no matter how tired he was, Hartley took himself down to his study for something to soothe his nerves. On his way there, though, he spotted a light burning in the kitchen, and went in to see Thomas, smoking and staring at a newspaper, a crowded ashtray in front of him. “What are you doing up?”

Thomas looked up. “I’ve not been sleeping well.”

Naturally. Thomas had been there, too. “Wait here a moment.”

He got the bottle of whiskey from his den and returned, pouring them each a generous measure. Sitting down at the kitchen table, he put one glass in front of Thomas, and in return, helped himself to a cigarette from the pack. “I’d nearly quit this filthy habit.” 

Thomas nodded and tossed back half of his whiskey. 

“Bad dreams?”

Thomas studied then end of his cigarette for a moment, then nodded again. “You, too?”

“Rather.” He took a fortifying sip of whiskey and a long draw on the cigarette. “Do you want to tell me?”

“I’ve been trying not to think about it.”

“That’s supposed to make it worse, according to one of the leading experts on war neurosis.” There had been an article in the Lancet. 

“I haven’t got a war neurosis.” 

“Nobody’s saying you have. The idea is, if you think about it, talk about it, while you’re awake, it doesn’t come back to haunt you at night. As much.” He turned the whiskey glass in his fingers. “I’ll tell you about mine, if you tell me about yours,” he offered.

Thomas sat back in his chair and blew smoke out through pursed lips. “It’ll sound ridiculous, said out loud.”

“Dreams often do.”

“All right,” he finally said. “But I’m going to need more of that.” He indicated the whiskey bottle.

Hartley pushed it over to him. 

After pouring himself another glassful, he said, “In the trenches, if there happened to be heavy rain and heavy shelling at the same time, you’d end up standing up to your knees in this…mixture, of blood and mud and bits of flesh. You just bury as much as you can find, you know, of the bodies. There are always bits left over. The men called it ‘cream of man soup.’ I thought it ought to be ‘cream of corpse soup,’ for the alliteration, but that never caught on.” He shook his head. “But that’s where it came from, I think, this dream I have. The dining room table, from Downton, is there in the trench. How it would fit, I have no idea, but that’s dreams for you. And we’re trying to get it laid for a dinner party. The china and silver and things from the house are all mixed in with mess tins and we’re using helmets for soup plates, and I just know that the soup course is going to be cream of man.”

He paused to take a swallow of whiskey, and Hartley was about to say that it sounded perfectly harrowing, and not ridiculous at all, when Thomas continued. 

“Meanwhile, the shells are exploding all around us, guns going off. People are getting killed left and right—people from Downton, I mean. We just roll them under the table and keep working. And all the while, I want to ask if anybody sees how ridiculous this all is, that we’re trying to put on a dinner in the middle of a bombardment, but then I can’t, because I realize I’m the only one still alive.”

The leading expert on war neurosis also thought that private soldiers and non-coms had different kinds of war neuroses to officers because their mental lives were less complex. He’d certainly have to revise that opinion if he met former-Corporal Barrow. The dream was a perfect metaphor for the biggest absurdity of the war, the way the general staff had clung to outmoded ideas of warfare, sending men over the top into machine-gun fire with bayonets affixed. 

“I started having the dream when I was transferred to the Downton hospital,” Thomas added. “It went away after a few months, but now it’s come back. Funny thing, William hadn’t even really died yet when it started.”

“William?”

“Second footman at Downton.”

“Ah. Were you…close?”

Thomas stared at him for a second, then let out a short bark of laughter. “God, no. I hated his guts.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “Doesn’t mean I’m glad to see him dead.” He hovered his hand over the cigarette pack, but in the end, didn’t take another. “Your turn.”

Fair was fair, so Hartley told him about his own dream, feeling as he did so that it was considerably less appalling than Thomas’s had been. It would not be unfair for Thomas to remind him that he, well back from the fighting, had been spared the worst of it. 

But when Hartley had finished with his recital, Thomas just poured him another drink and said, “A lot of them did cry for their mothers. That’s the bloody buggering sod of it.”

Whatever psychic toll it was taking on him, Hartley found that Thomas was a stalwart prop during the crisis. It was, perhaps, a bit unfair of him to be surprised—Thomas had always been at his best in an emergency. He did complain a bit, in private and mostly on the theme of how unfortunate it was that they were both too busy and exhausted for any recreational physical exertions, but he never shied from even the most difficult and unpleasant of tasks, and often found small ways to make himself useful.

One particularly trying case came at the cottage of Mrs. Long. Before the war, she had been a widow with three strapping sons, running a small but well-kept farm. Now, he discovered, she was living in a ramshackle cottage that was little more than a shed. 

“Mam’s ill,” Billy Long declared, blocking the doorway with his body. 

“Yes, Billy—that’s why we’re here, to see to her. May we come in?”

Billy considered this question. “I’ll ask Mam,” he decided, and shut the door in their faces. 

“Not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, is he?” Thomas observed. 

“No,” Hartley agreed. Though simple-minded, Billy was strong as an ox, and before the war, had been able to pull his weight on the farm provided his brothers kept a close watch on him. Hartley had a sneaking suspicion of what had happened to change the family’s fortunes. 

Moments later, Billy returned to let them in. During the examination, Hartley asked, delicately, whether there was anyone nearby to help care for her. 

Mrs. Long shook her head. “George and Harry—Wipers,” she explained between coughs. 

Billy added, in his booming but still childlike voice, with the tone of one reciting something he had been told many times, “George and Harry aren’t coming back, but we mustn’t be sad because they’re heroes.” 

“Quite right,” Hartley said. “Wipers” was a common Anglicization of “Ypres,” a region of Belgium where thousands of Englishmen had lost their lives, often whole regiments at a time. George and Harry had probably joined up together, and died together. Billy had been spared the same fate only the Army wouldn’t want a man with the mind of a child. 

“Mam, when are you going to make breakfast?” Billy added plaintively. 

Mrs. Long tried to get up, but Hartley firmly barred her way. “He can’t fix nowt to eat on his own,” she protested. 

“Why don’t I see what I can manage?” Thomas suggested. “Come along, Billy—you can show me where your Mam keeps things.”

His intervention not only eased Mrs. Long’s mind, but enabled Hartley to conduct a more thorough examination than otherwise—the cottage was only one room, and Hartley doubted very much that she would have consented to raise her nightgown to have her chest auscultated if Billy were not sufficiently distracted. 

Once the examination was finished, and Billy was occupied with helping his mother drink a cup of tea, Thomas showed a surprising grasp of the essentials by drawing Hartley aside and saying, “I hope she’s not too ill—I don’t know what’s going to happen to that poor sod if his mother snuffs it.”

Despite the crudeness of his words, Hartley could tell his concern was genuine. Thomas’s hidden reserves of compassion did crop up in the strangest of places—even many in the village, who had known Billy Long all his life, didn’t deal with him quite as easily and comfortably as Thomas had. “Mrs. Long’s case isn’t too severe as yet, but she needs rest if it’s going to stay that way.”

Thomas nodded, completing the thought. “And he’s not going to be up to looking after her.”

“Yes—someone will have to be found to help, but there’s no family nearby, and the neighbors….” That the others living in this row of cottages were similarly situated to Mrs. Long, would be the kindest way of putting it. 

“Vicar’s wife?” Thomas suggested. “They usually do things like that.”

“Well, yes, but she’s just lost her husband….”

“All the more reason. Can’t imagine a God-botherer would want to sit alone in an empty house while there’s--” Thomas apparently considered and rejected several descriptive phrases before settling on, “people in need.” 

Hartley wasn’t certain, but sent Thomas over to the vicarage to see if he could talk her into it. To his surprise, Mrs. Lewis not only agreed, but came with a basketful of linen and food, and urged Hartley to notify her of any similar cases. “Just as your man said, Mr. Lewis wouldn’t want me to sit at home feeling sorry for myself.”

Behind her back, Thomas sketched a bow. 

#

The arrival of the Spanish ‘flu kept Thomas too busy to even think of his revenge against Mrs. Poysner. He almost didn’t mind, since Doctor Hartley was just as busy and was relying on him as much as Thomas could have hoped. By mid-week, the day after their late-night conversation in the kitchen, some of the earliest cases began to show clear signs of recovery, which Thomas hoped eased Doctor Hartley’s cares somewhat. 

It didn’t, however, make them any less busy, since new cases were coming in every day. When Dulcie became one of them, Thomas found himself busier than ever, since there were only so many of her duties that could be let slide or reasonably entrusted to Dinah. He only hoped that since Mrs. Poysner’s penchant for carrying tales went both ways; he ought to get some credit for his willingness to pitch in with whatever was needed, doing things that were well beneath the dignity even of a footman, let alone a valet and medical assistant. 

Finally, toward the end of the second week, the number of new cases slowed to a trickle, and there was time for both of them to catch their breath. “Nearly everyone in the village has been exposed, now, and those who are going to fall ill have done so,” Hartley explained. 

They were in the consulting rooms, Hartley writing up the day’s calls and replenishing the things from his bag that they’d used, when Dinah came clattering in, preceded by several moments by her boots. “Doctor, Granby’s took ill! I went out to pat Star, and he’s sat down in the stall with the pitchfork still in ‘is ‘and.”

They hurried outside and into the small stable at the end of the garden. The horse was tied to a ring outside the stall; Dinah went straight to it and began stroking its nose. Thomas and Hartley continued into the stall; Thomas involuntarily wrinkled his nose at the smell. Granby hadn’t gotten too far along in cleaning it before he was struck down.

“Doc,” Granby said, breathing heavily. “I told the girl not to trouble you. I’ll be all right once I’ve caught me breath.”

Hartley knelt next to him and felt at his wrist and forehead. “Nonsense. You’re burning with fever; you have the ‘flu. Let’s get you up to bed. Give me a hand, Thomas.”

Between them, they managed to help Granby up the rough stairs to his room above the stable, and into his narrow cot. 

“Now, get undressed,” Hartley said. “Rest and aspirin, that’s what you need.”

“I ‘aven’t fed Star yet, or done t’stall,” Granby protested. 

“Don’t worry about that now.” Hartley took the aspirin bottle out of his pocket.

“I’ll get some water,” Thomas said quickly. He didn’t want to be stuck helping Granby into his pyjamas if there was any way to avoid it. Finding a cup and tin pitcher, but no water, he took the pitcher down to fill in the stable-yard pump. Seeing Dinah still fussing over the horse, he asked, “Don’t you have work to do?”

“Yes, Mr. Barrow.” She ran for the house. 

Back in the loft room, they finished getting Granby settled and left him to his rest, Hartley adding, “One of us will come check on you before the household goes to bed, but we’ll try not to wake you.” He closed the door softly, and preceded Thomas down the stairs. “It’s a good thing you haven’t taken ill; I don’t know how we’d keep up,” he added. 

Thomas was about to say something about how kind it was of the doctor to say so, when Hartley continued, “You’ll have to see to Star.”

Thomas answered without thinking. “I’m not a groom.”

Hartley gave him a sharp look. “Do you think I should do it?”

Stung by the injustice of it all—after he’d been doing Dulcie’s work for days, without a word of thanks—he said, “No. I only meant, I wouldn’t know how, sir.” The closest he came to horses was passing around stirrup-cups before a hunt. 

“I’m sure you’ll manage to figure it out,” Hartley said dryly. “Take out the dirty straw and put in clean, give her some feed, make sure the water bucket’s full. That’s all you have to do.”

“Yes, sir,” Thomas said pointedly. 

Stabbing viciously at the straw with the pitchfork relieved some of Thomas’s frustration, but it all came back when he upset the wheelbarrow on the way to the dung pile, then trod in the spilled manure as he tried to right it. His shoes would never be the same again, to say nothing of his trousers.

Filthy, stinking, and furious, he returned to the house, hoping for a hot bath, only to be stopped at the kitchen door by Mrs. Poysner. “You’re not tracking that muck through my kitchens,” she said.

“What do you want me to do, strip off here in the garden?”

“Yes. Avert your eyes, Dinah!”

Looking up at the night sky, Thomas said, “Wonderful. My humiliation is complete.”

The next morning, Doctor Hartley insisted that they go to the stables and check on Granby, even before breakfast. Thomas wondered how often stables had to be cleaned, and whether he could borrow Dinah’s boots before he had to do it again. 

When they got there, though, Dinah and Granby were both standing by the horse’s stall—Granby looking very ill, and leaning against the side of the stall for support. 

“Doctor!” Dinah said, clomping over. “Star’s took ill! Do ‘orses get the Spanish flu?”

“I shouldn’t think so.” Hartley glanced at the horse; it was standing sort of hunched over, and even to Thomas’s inexpert eye, it did look like it felt unwell. “Granby, you should be in bed.”

“I got ‘im up,” Dinah confessed. “I didn’t know what to do, Star being so ill.”

“Thomas will telephone the veterinarian,” Hartley said.

“Yes, sir.” Thomas hurried back to the house to do that, glad to be assigned something that took him out of the stables. Once he had the vet on the ‘phone, though, he began asking all kinds of questions Thomas didn’t know the answers to. 

“This is Doctor Hartley’s man. His horse is ill.”

“Ill in what way?”

“I don’t know; the groom says it’s ill.”

“Is there discharge from the nose and eyes?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“Has it been eating and drinking?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Passing muck?”

“I _really_ couldn’t say.”

“Very well. I’ll be there shortly.”

When Thomas got back to the stables, Hartley was coming down the stairs from Granby’s room. “I’ve given him more aspirin and got him back to bed. Dinah, if you or Mrs. Poysner see him up and about, remind him I’ve instructed him to stay in bed.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Dinah said. “What about Star?” 

“The vet’s on his way,” Thomas spoke up. 

Hartley nodded. “Good. Then Dinah, return to your duties--” 

“Oh, can I _please_ stay with Star?”

He hesitated. “Thomas, if you could help Mrs. Poysner with breakfast….?”

“Yes, sir.” He’d rather do that than nurse the sick beast, at any rate. 

“Thank you, Thomas. I do appreciate your willingness to go beyond your usual duties in this emergency.”

“It’s no trouble, sir.”

He returned to the kitchen, where Mrs. Poysner received the news of his last-minute substitution for Dinah with a huff and an order to stir the porridge. 

As it turned out, taking over for Dinah meant that, in addition to taking Hartley his breakfast in the dining room, which he had been doing for Dulcie for a week, he also had to make trays for Dulcie and Granby, and to deliver Granby’s. “I’ll take Dulcie hers meself,” she said. “It wouldn’t be quite decent for you to call on Dulcie in ‘er bedroom, would it?”

When he came down into the stable from Granby’s room, a gentleman in an elderly frock coat was removing a thermometer from the horse’s backside. 

“Has she gotten into anything she shouldn’t have?” the vet asked Dinah. 

“I don’t think so,” she said, looking over at Thomas.

“Just her usual feed,” he said. At least, he hoped so. “That’s what this is in this bin, right?” he asked, pointing out what he’d given the horse last night. 

“That’s it,” Dinah said. “But didn’t you give ‘er any ‘ay?”

“What?” Thomas asked blankly. 

“’ay!” Dinah repeated. “You know, what’s in the ‘ay loft? Dried up grass and stuff?”

Oh, hay. “I didn’t realize I had to.” Both the vet and Dinah looked at him as though he were the stupidest creature alive. “Shall I give it some now?”

“No,” the vet said. “How much corn did you give her?”

“I don’t know. A bucketful.” 

“This bucket here in the stall?” 

Before Thomas could answer, Dinah left the horse’s side and boxed his ears so ferociously he saw stars. “ _A bucketful?_ You. Bloomin’. Idiot!” She punctuated each word with another blow to his head. 

“For Christ’s sake, woman--” Thomas began. 

“What in God’s name is going on here?” Doctor Hartley interrupted. 

“He’s killed Star, the fathead!” Dinah wailed. 

“I ‘aven’t killed ‘er,” Thomas said. “She’s just got a bellyache.”

“’orses die from that!”

“Please,” Hartley said. “Dinah, Thomas, control yourselves.”

Thomas wanted to retort that he was hardly the one out of control, but managed to confine himself to glaring at Dinah and straightening out his coat in a pointed manner. 

“Doctor Darrow, can you shed any light on this situation?” Hartley continued.

The vet said, “Well, your mare has a case of colic, presumably brought on by having been given an excess of corn.”

“ _And_ no ‘ay,” Dinah put in. 

Hartley silenced her with a look. “All right. What’s the treatment?”

“I can try giving her some linseed oil to move things along. The most important thing is to keep her from rolling. They do that to try to relieve the abdominal discomfort, but often, the action twists the bowel, creating a fatal obstruction. There’s no way to tell whether she’s already rolled or not. If she has, there’s nothing we can do.” 

“She was down when I got ‘ere,” Dinah said. “I bet she ‘as.”

“But we can’t be certain, so we must not lose hope,” Hartley said to her. To Darrow, he continued, “The groom’s ill as well, with Spanish flu, so you’ll need to tell us exactly what to do.”

“Once we’ve given her the draught, she’ll need to be walked. That prevents her from rolling, and helps stimulate the digestive tract. But it’ll need to be kept up all day, until she passes muck…or until her suffering worsens and you call me to come back with the humane killer. She can’t be left alone, even tied up, for a moment.” 

“I’ll do it,” Dinah said. “Please, I know all about ‘orses. More than ‘e does, anyway,” she said with a black look at Thomas. “I was a Land Girl in the war.”

“That may be best, in that case,” Hartley said. “Thomas, you can go back to the house. With both maids unavailable to her, I’m sure Mrs. Poysner will be able to keep you occupied.”

She certainly did. Thomas found himself scrubbing pots, cleaning the grates, and even—to his abject horror—blacking the stove. As if to rub salt in the wound, a letter came from O’Brien. He took it off to a corner with his lunch of bread and cheese, feeling like Cinderella and hoping for a cheering word or two. 

_Dear Thomas_ , she wrote. _I hope you’re well, but as you haven’t seen fit to write, I have no idea. Many things have happened here, but I won’t tell you about them until you let me know you haven’t been murdered and stuffed in a chest like one of Bluebeard’s wives. Sincerely, O’Brien._

Furious, he scribbled off a reply and dropped it in the post when Mrs. Poysner sent him to the greengrocer’s with a _basket_. 

#

“O’Brien, there’s post for you,” Anna said, handing her an envelope. “It looks like it’s from Thomas—is he well?”

“Mind your own business,” she said, taking the letter out into the courtyard to open it. For the reply to have come so quickly, Thomas must have written and posted it as soon as he received hers. 

Lighting a cigarette, she tore open the envelope. _Dear O’Brien_ , the note read. _It was going well until I killed Hartley’s horse and got myself demoted to scullery boy. I wish that I had been shot in the head instead of in the hand. Sincerely, Thomas._

Clearly, the boy was too stupid to be let out on his own. Going back inside, she sat down in the servants’ hall to compose a reply.

Anna had evidently _not_ minded her own business, because Daisy appeared before she had time to set pen to paper. “How’s he getting on, our Thomas?”

“He’s not yours,” she snapped back. 

Daisy didn’t cower and scamper away as she would have a year or two ago. “But is he well?”

“Very well; they’re making him Prime Minister,” she answered, knowing the last thing Thomas would want was for word to get round that he was unhappy. 

“Oh, that’s—what?”

“Don’t you have work to do?”

 _Now_ she scampered, and O’Brien began writing. _Dear Thomas. Self-pity doesn’t suit you. Why and how did you kill his horse? More importantly, does he know for certain it was you?_ She needed more detail than he’d given her if she was going to help him find a way out of this latest cock-up. 

He _had_ let her know he wasn’t dead, though, so she filled in the rest of the letter with Downton’s news: the suspicions over Vera Bates’ murder, Lady Sybil’s scandalous near-elopement, preparations for Matthew and Lavinia’s wedding. 

O’Brien posted her letter, and burned Thomas’s before any of the other staff could sneak a read of it. The mere fact that he’d written was enough to set tongues wagging. Even Carson pulled her aside to ask how he was faring. 

The more often she was asked, the more often she wanted to remind them all that they’d never had a kind word for Thomas while he was there, and she didn’t think much of them pretending they hadn’t been happy to see him driven out of the only home he’d ever known. She held her tongue, and simply told each one that Thomas was doing well, and she’d let him know they’d asked. But the subject was not allowed to drop until that evening, when something more interesting came along in the form of Carson, Lavinia, and her ladyship all being struck down with Spanish ‘flu.

#

“It’s a real miracle, Doctor Hartley,” Mrs. Graham said, seeing him to the door. “We’re so grateful for all you’ve done.” 

“Mrs. Graham, this outcome pleases me more than I can say,” he responded. He hadn’t managed quite as many follow-up visits to Alf Graham as he would have liked, with the ‘flu patients taking up so much of his time, but in truth, he knew that if Alf’s wounds had become septic, no amount of attention from his doctor would have helped, and as such she had little to thank him for. It was pure luck that Alf had escaped the ravages of infection, and at this visit, Hartley had been confident in pronouncing that he was out of the woods. 

“Here, before you go.” She handed him a cloth-wrapped bundle from the kitchen dresser. “One of my own meat pies. I hope you like it.”

“I’m sure I shall. Thank you.”

The Graham’s cottage was the last call of the day, and Hartley was grateful for it. He was surprised at how much longer the day had seemed without Thomas’s company. He’d done quite well without an assistant before the war, but it seemed that in only a few short weeks, he’d grown used to the luxury.

Still, it couldn’t be helped, and one way or the other Star ought to have turned the corner by now, so with any luck, Hartley would have Thomas along when he made his calls tomorrow.

Parking the car next to the stables, he noticed Dinah still walking Star in a circle around the stableyard. She must have been on her feet all day, the poor girl, but at least the mare was still alive. Hartley had had no idea Dinah was so attached to her. Acknowledging her with a wave, Hartley went up into the loft to check on Granby. 

As it turned out, he ought to have stopped to hear the report on the horse’s condition first, as that was all Granby wanted to talk about. 

“Yes, Doc, I stayed all day abed like you told me to, excepting one time I went to the window to see how Star was faring. Is she all right? I know Dinah means well, but I’m not sure even a stout lass like her can keep a horse on its feet when it wants to roll.” 

Hartley had to promise him a full account later in order to get Granby to hold still for an examination. His illness hadn’t worsened, and Hartley was hopeful. With most illnesses, an older man like Granby would have been at higher risk, but this particular disease seemed to strike hardest at those in their prime. The old and the very young were often spared. 

When Hartley returned to the stableyard, Dinah was happy to supply all the details that Granby had asked about, and then some. “She passed a little dry muck, so I gave her a bran mash, like the veterinary said, and then about an hour ago she passed a great big one. But I don’t know that she’s out of danger yet, and I don’t want to stop too soon.” 

“Why don’t you go tell Granby about it, and see what he thinks?” Hartley suggested. “She looks better to me, but my education didn’t cover horse illnesses. I’ll keep walking her while you do.”

“Yes, Doctor—thank you!” She ran off to the stable. 

Hartley clapped the mare on the neck and continued the circuit around the courtyard. He was glad she’d made it, although he really had next to no use for a horse. The motor was more efficient for making calls, and riding out for pleasure had never been one of his particular pastimes. Before the war, he’d tried to use her once or twice a week, on the days when he had a light round of calls to make, but he’d kept her mainly for Granby’s sake. Hartley half-suspected that if Star had succumbed to her illness, the man might have lost the will to live himself. 

When his path around the yard took him near the house, he saw Thomas sitting on the kitchen step, smoking. When he caught sight of Hartley, he stood, but not before looking like he was thinking it over. 

“Hullo,” Hartley said to him. “You don’t look much like your usual self.” Thomas was in his shirtsleeves, and wearing one of Mrs. Poysner’s aprons to protect his trousers. 

“I don’t feel much like my usual self, either,” he said sulkily. “My ears are still ringing from this morning, and I’m knackered.”

Hartley nodded sympathetically. “I think Dinah will be pleased to keep looking after Star,” he offered, hoping it might be some consolation. Asking Thomas to do it in the first place had been a mistake. 

“Very good, sir.” He flicked his cigarette end into the bushes. “I should be getting back to my duties.”

“And I should keep walking this horse, before she comes out and boxes my ears, too,” Hartley agreed. “Come along, old girl.”

He completed two more circuits of the yard before Dinah came back down and reported that Granby thought the horse could be safely put back in her stall. “I’m to give her some hay, and another bran mash in the morning.”

Hartley nodded. “I hope you won’t mind looking after Star until Granby’s back on his feet, since you know how.”

“No, I don’t mind at all, Doctor—thank you!” She took over Star’s lead rope and led the mare back to her stable.

Going inside to get ready for dinner, Hartley waited in his bedroom for several minutes before realizing Thomas wasn’t coming to help him. He didn’t really need help, of course, but Thomas liked to do it, and usually made time, however busy he was. He must really be in a snit; Hartley would have to think of something to cheer him. 

When he took off his jacket to wash, Hartley found the meat pie. He decided to take it down to the kitchen, so Mrs. Poysner could warm it, or whatever was appropriate. 

Going down the passage to the kitchen, he heard Mrs. Poysner’s voice. “—feel better once you’ve put on your jacket and carried in his dinner. You like doing that.” 

Hartley heard Thomas’s voice murmuring in reply, but couldn’t make out the words. He rapped on the door and went in, seeing Thomas slouched at the kitchen table while Mrs. Poysner put the finishing touches on dinner. “Don’t sulk, Thomas,” he said, crossing the kitchen to hand Mrs. Poysner the parcel. “Mrs. Graham sent us a meat pie. You’ll be glad to know Alf’s doing well.”

“That’s good, sir,” Thomas said dully. 

“You should have some, since you assisted with the cure. Mrs. Poysner, dinner in…”

“Ten minutes, Doctor.”

Mrs. Poysner evidently succeeded in prodding Thomas into action; he appeared in the dining room on schedule, wearing his jacket and looking somewhat smoothed over. He served the roast and meat pie, saying, “I’ll be back in a moment with the vegetables, sir.”

But when Thomas returned, he barely made it into the dining room before he collapsed to his knees with a tremendous clatter of china and cutlery.


	3. Part Two

Later, Hartley would be furious with himself for not understanding sooner what was happening. He had seen a hundred cases of Spanish ‘flu, and knew as well as anyone that headache and fatigue were the first symptoms. But in those first few minutes, it was all frenzied action. Hartley rushed to Thomas’s side and, putting his hand on his shoulder, felt the burning heat of him even through all the layers of his clothes. “Good God!”

Thomas looked around himself as if he couldn’t quite remember how he had come to be on the floor. 

Mrs. Poysner came running in, drawn, no doubt, by the noise. “What’s happened to him?”

“Spanish ‘flu,” Hartley said grimly. “Let’s get him into bed.”

Thomas was nearly unconscious and more of a hindrance than a help, but between them, Hartley and Mrs. Poysner managed to get him up the stairs. Hartley steadied him while Mrs. Poysner pulled down the covers, and together they deposited him, more or less gently, into the bed. 

“I’ll get your medical bag, will I?”

“And flannels, a towel, and a basin of cool water,” Hartley said. “Quick as you can.”

Thomas roused while Hartley was stripping him to his underwear. He looked around himself as if wondering how he’d gotten here, and said, “Jonathan?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“What…?”

“You’re ill,” Hartley explained. 

“Oh, don’t be like that.” Thomas reached clumsily for him. 

Hartley patted his hand away. “Now, you need your rest.”

Thomas sighed, and his eyelids fluttered closed. Probably just as well, since Mrs. Poysner was coming. 

“Oh, my,” she said, turning her eyes away from Thomas’s half-dressed form. 

“Yes, it’s quite all right, Mrs. Poysner, I’ll see to him.”

“Good, good.” She put her hand on the doorknob. “I’ll just close this, in case Dinah or Dulcie comes by.”

Hartley managed to get some aspirin down Thomas’s throat, and began sponging him down with the cool water. But his fever continued to climb. 

Thomas was young and strong—exactly the sort that was hit hardest by this ‘flu. Hartley stayed by his side, doing all of the things he told patients’ spouses and parents and servants to do—applying cold compresses, spooning tea or water into him every time he woke enough to swallow, giving further doses of aspirin as the night wore on. He knew when he gave that advice that it was as much to help the family members as the patients. It eased the terrible strain of worry to feel that their care might make some difference to the outcome. 

Hartley knew that it didn’t. The Squire’s daughter, who’d had the most tender nursing anyone could wish, from both her maid and her mother’s own hands, had died, while their kitchen girl had recovered, despite being left alone in her garret and only looked in on when one of the other maids had a spare moment. 

Around midnight, Hartley realized he had drifted off when a gasp woke him. He re-lit the candle, which had guttered out, and saw that Thomas was slicked with sweat, his eyes wide open and darting around. 

“Captain Hartley,” he said, reaching out.

“Yes.”

“Am I ill?”

“Yes. Yes. But you’re going to be all right--”

“Am I too ill to go to the front?”

He was delirious, Hartley realized. “Ah, Thomas….”

“No! They can’t make me go now.” Thomas clutched at his sleeve with surprising strength. “You’ve got to tell them I’m too ill to go.” 

“Yes,” Hartley said. “Of course you’re too ill to go. It’s all right, Thomas. You’re safe.”

Thomas settled back against the pillow, breathing hard. “You promise?”

“Yes. I promise. You aren’t going anywhere.”

#

Thomas woke feeling as though he had been beaten all over with sticks. If this was what being a kitchen maid was like, it was a wonder any of them survived. He’d felt better in the trenches after a 70-hour bombardment. 

Christ, even his _eyelids_ hurt. What _had_ he been doing yesterday? Everything after tea time was a blur. 

More to the point—now that his eyes were open—what was he still doing in bed, in broad daylight?

He lurched out of bed, colliding as he did with a washstand that someone had left right next to his bed. _Who_ and _why_ were questions he’d have to work on answering once he’d cleared his head. Now, though, he sat down heavily on the bed and watched the puddle of spilled water slowly form itself into a stream and run toward the door. 

The door opened, knocking the stream off course. “What in heaven’s name are you knocking about?” Mrs. Poysner demanded.

Thomas blinked up at her. “What?”

Mrs. Poysner bustled over to him. Thomas ducked, thinking he was about to get another clip round the ear—that was one part of yesterday he remembered clearly—but instead she put her hand on his forehead and clucked her tongue. “You need to stay in bed,” she declared, pushing him back down. “You’re _ill_.”

“I am?” That rang a bell, now that she mentioned it, and explained how wretched he felt. 

“Yes. Now just stay there, and I’ll bring you some porridge.”

#

But when Mrs. Poysner returned with tea and porridge, Thomas had fallen asleep again. Sleep, or unconsciousness, she wasn’t sure which. Dulcie had been much the same way in the first days of her illness—hardly ever awake, and confused when she was. 

Mrs. Poysner put the breakfast tray aside and righted the washstand, making up some cold compresses. She put them on Thomas’s forehead, neck, and under his arms, then hesitated over the last. With Dulcie, Dr. Hartley had had her put some on her thighs, too, but that didn’t seem quite decent with a man, did it? 

She tried shutting her eyes and placing them by feel, but that was, if anything, even worse. She quickly applied the compresses and pulled the blankets back up, glad there was no one in the room to see her blushing, except Thomas, and he was hardly in a position to notice. 

On the principle of waste-not, want-not, she took the tea up to Dulcie, who by now was feeling well enough to sit up in bed and look at her film magazines. She certainly hoped the housemaid would be able to take up at least some of her duties soon—with Thomas ill, and Dinah down at the stables mooning over that horse every time her back was turned, Mrs. Poysner was run off her feet. The only mercy was that Dulcie was past needing much nursing. 

When she went up again a couple of hours later to give Thomas some aspirin, she found him tangled in a snarl of sweat-soaked sheets, thrashing about and mumbling to himself. 

“Thomas!” She shook his shoulder. “Try to wake up, lovie, you’re dreaming.” Doctor had warned her before he left that morning, that Thomas had bad dreams about the war, and the fever might worsen them. 

It took several more tries before Thomas woke up, and when he did, he struggled to sit up, eyes darting around like a frightened horse’s. 

“It’s all right, pet,” she said, rubbing his sweat-slick back. “Let’s get some more of that aspirin into you, and a big glass of water, all right?”

He nodded. She put the tablets in his mouth and held the cup to his lips. Once he’d drunk all the water and caught his breath, he said, “Where’s Cap—Doctor Hartley?” looking about as if he expected to find him hiding behind the curtains. 

“He’s out seeing patients, love.”

For some reason, that seemed to alarm Thomas all the more. “You’ve got tell him—he’s got to believe me, I didn’t mean to kill that horse.”

“Star, you mean?” He must be more tender-hearted than she’d thought, if he was still thinking about that. “Don’t you worry about that, love. You just rest and get better.” 

“I didn’t mean to,” he insisted. “I really didn’t know.” 

“Of course not.”

“I didn’t. I said I didn’t know anything about horses.”

“And no reason you should,” she said, trying to soothe him. 

“But you’ll tell him? Hartley, I mean. That I didn’t mean it?”

“You can tell him yourself, love,” she said, wondering if Thomas thought he was going to die. She knew he could—they’d had a dozen deaths in the village already—but it was no good for him to think like that. 

Thomas shook his head. “No. He won’t…you have to help me.”

In the end, she had to promise in order to get Thomas to lie back down and try to rest again. 

#

Hartley had scarcely stepped in the door when Mrs. Poysner came running up. “Doctor, begging your pardon, but I think you should go up and see Thomas right away.”

Hartley paused in the action of taking off his coat. “Is he worse?”

“Not _worse_ exactly, but he’s been fretting himself—you remember how Dulcie kept rabbiting on about missing the new Douglas Fairbanks picture, when she was first ill?”

“Yes,” Hartley said. He didn’t know what that had to do with Thomas. 

“Well, it’s like that, only somehow he’s got it in his head that you’re cross with him over what happened with the horse. Every time I look in on him, if he’s awake, he tells me how I have to make you understand he didn’t mean it. Breaks your heart, it does.”

Hartley’s first, ignoble thought was that Thomas was deliberately playing on Mrs. Poysner’s sympathies. She was still inclined to _poor-lamb_ him, and while Hartley himself did see a bit of the poor lamb in Thomas, it was difficult to imagine him showing his real vulnerabilities to Mrs. Poysner.

All suspicions fled, however, when he reached Thomas’s room, with Mrs. Poysner on his heels. “Oh, he’s worse,” she said. “Much worse—he wasn’t breathing like that last time I looked in on him.”

“Help me get him sitting up,” Hartley said grimly. His mind went back to the village’s first case of Spanish ‘flu—hadn’t the vicar been breathing _just like that_ before he died? Hartley would almost swear he could see the blood splattering the bedclothes.

“When was the last time he had aspirin?”

“Around three.”

“He can have more, then. The bottle’s in my bag.” It didn’t do much, at this stage, but it was all they had.

They gave him the dose and Hartley applied the stethoscope to his back.

“Is it bad?” Mrs. Poysner asked, twisting her apron in her hands.

“Yes,” Hartley said. 

“What about a poultice, then? Or a steam with oil of peppermint? Agatha what does for Mr. Evans says she read in the newspaper that helps.”

“We can try a steam of cinnamon.” It wouldn’t really help. The steam would relieve mild congestion, but this was far beyond that. “A few doctors have seen results from it. And it can’t possibly hurt.”

“I’ll go and fix it. And I’ll pray, too.” She nodded firmly.

“If that helped, the vicar would still be alive,” Hartley snapped. It never helped any of the poor bastards in France, either, and the war had left him with serious doubts that God even existed.

He felt sorry for his rough words, though, when Mrs. Poysner drew herself up and said, “He works in mysterious ways, Doctor.” 

“Yes. Yes, you’re quite right. We must try everything.” 

So they did. The steam treatment did ease Thomas’s breathing a little, but only for a short time—as soon as the basin of water cooled, whatever slight benefit he’d derived vanished. Hartley kept bathing him with cool water, and having him drink every time he roused enough to swallow, and gave him aspirin as often as he dared. Mrs. Poysner kept bringing broth for Thomas, sandwiches for Hartley, and cups of tea for both of them.

“Only I keep thinking of his poor mother,” she said on one of these occasions. “Getting him back from the war, only to have this happen.”

“His mother is no longer living, I’m afraid.” At least, that was the explanation Thomas had given for spending his week of home leave in Paris. Then again, a few months later Hartley had found him asking one of the other doctors for a loan, with the explanation that he wanted to buy “something nice for my poor mum,” and that if he waited until he was next paid, he might not get it in the post in time for Christmas. Hartley hoped he wasn’t flattering himself with the assumption that it was he who had been entrusted with the truth. 

“His father, then?” Mrs. Poysner asked.

“I’m not sure,” Hartley admitted. “The only person writing to him in France, as far as I know, was a servant from his last place. If…if the worst happens, we’ll have to write there and ask if they know who should be notified.” 

Another time, she came in as Thomas was raving about the horse and how he hadn’t meant it and Hartley couldn’t let him be sent to the Front. Hartley paused in his attempts to reassure him to ask, “Is this what he was doing earlier today?”

Mrs. Poysner nodded, adding, “He was making summat more sense, but.” 

“Fevers are usually higher at night.” He mopped Thomas’s brow with a cool cloth. “I did, you know,” he said, not looking at Mrs. Poysner. “Let him be sent to the Front. He begged me not to.”

Mrs. Poysner didn’t seem to know what to say. “I’m sure you thought it best, Doctor.”

“I knew it would be wretchedly awful, and thought he’d probably die.” He shook his head. “I said there was nothing I could do.”

“Begging your pardon, Doctor, but…was there?”

“I don’t know.” Hartley had tried, but only as much as he could without sticking his neck out. Even as he’d spoken to the unit commander, he’d realized that to do anything more than remind him that Thomas was his batman, and ask if he might be given another chance, might raise suspicions about the true nature of their relationship. “They had to send somebody….You see, orderlies posted near the Front line were being killed and wounded faster than the Army could train up new ones. They’d just started sending VAD nurses to France, to make up some of the difference, and of course they had to be kept well back from the fighting, but their being there freed up some of our orderlies to be sent forward. He should have been safe, since he was my batman, but he’d just gotten in a bit of trouble, so….” He shook his head. “I couldn’t say it wasn’t fair, when so many others were sent forward for no reason at all.”

“It doesn’t sound like it’s anything for you to blame yourself, then,” Mrs. Poysner opined.

“I suppose not.” When Mrs. Poysner had left, Hartley took Thomas’s hand in his. Now, though…now, if there were someone behind this, some intelligence which could be reasoned with, Hartley knew he would spare no effort to persuade him to change his mind. Whether it was fair or not, whether it was indiscreet or not. Even if he knew that, if Thomas succumbed to the fever, someone else would be taken in his place, Hartley would shamelessly argue that Thomas ought to be spared. 

Christ, no wonder Thomas had been furious with him, when he’d spread his hands and said _I don’t like it any more than you do_. How heartless he must have seemed. But Hartley hadn’t loved him then.

The thought took Hartley by surprise, but it was pointless to deny it. He couldn’t say only that he was fond of Thomas, that he was useful in the practice and around the house. Those things were true of Dulcie and Granby. If either of them had died of their illness, Hartley would have been rather sad. 

If Thomas did, he’d be shattered. 

And Thomas didn’t know, Hartley thought. Maybe, in other circumstances, it would be better if he didn’t. His first impulse, if he knew, would be to figure out how to take advantage. 

_He remembered how, one evening in his second week in France, he’d returned to his quarters to find then-Corporal Barrow asleep in his bed. It wasn’t quite as much of a shock as it could have been, since they’d already shared one amorous encounter in a supply closet, but still, it had seemed more than a little forward._

_When Hartley had woken him and asked him to explain himself, Thomas said, “I wanted to ask you something,” smiling up at him seductively._

_One thing had led to another—as things tended to do. Afterwards, Barrow had sat up, lit one of Hartley’s cigarettes, and said, “I really did want to ask you something.”_

_“What?”_

_“You haven’t picked a batman yet, have you?”_

_When Hartley had said no, he hadn’t, Thomas had started outlining his experience, how he’d been a footman at Downton Abbey, had dressed Dukes, would be, if not for the war, valet to an Earl._

_Hartley had laughed and pointed out that Thomas had things a little bit backwards. “The more usual thing would be to get yourself taken on as my batman so you could seduce me, not seduce me so you can ask for a job.”_

_“Does that work better?” Thomas had asked, in a tone of mock-innocence._

For some reason, he next thought of something Thomas had said a few weeks ago, in the shed in Downton village. _I was going to be killed, and nobody would help me._

It had been Hartley himself, he realized, who had things backwards. Thomas had known exactly what he was doing, that night in northern France: getting someone to help him. 

And when Thomas had needed help…well. 

Hartley didn’t fool himself into thinking that Thomas had sacrificed his virtue in hopes of saving his life, or anything so frightfully Victorian as that. He’d clearly known what he was doing, and had enjoyed himself. But there had been a hint of the mercenary about it, and who could blame him? Boys like Thomas were sent off to die by the thousands every day, and officer-class twits like Hartley did nothing to stop it, didn’t even seem to care—unless they were given a reason to care. 

The least he could do, Hartley thought, was make sure that Thomas knew he did care. If he got a chance. The next time Mrs. Poysner came up—near midnight—Hartley sent her firmly to bed. Sometimes, patients had a short period of lucidity before…before the end, and if Thomas did, Hartley wanted to be sure they could speak freely. 

#

Thomas woke, gasping for breath, chilled to the bone and slick with sweat. He was propped up on a stack of pillows, something he’d seen done enough times over the last few weeks to know why. Next to him, a candle guttered on the bedside table, and Dr. Hartley sat, his head bowed, lightly holding Thomas’s hand. 

A fit of coughing came over him, and Thomas pulled his hand away to wrap his arms round his chest. Hartley, apparently woken by the coughing, patted his back. 

When he sat back against the pillows, Hartley took up his hand again. “Thomas,” he said.

“Sir?” he rasped, hating how weak his voice sounded.

Hartley squeezed his hand. “I want you to know…first of all, I know you didn’t mean any harm, with Star. You were only doing your best—as you said, you aren’t a groom. It’s my fault, really, as much as anyone’s—I ought to have sent you up to ask Granby the details.”

“Thank you, sir,” Thomas said, wondering why he was going on about that. He vaguely remembered that Dinah had come up, once, to tell him Star was better and she was sorry for hitting him. “All’s well that ends well.”

“Yes, well,” Hartley said. “I wouldn’t want you to think that I was angry with you.” He looked down at their clasped hands. “You see, I’ve grown very fond of you. I think—I know—that I was harder on you than I should have been, and--”

“Oh, God,” Thomas said, as the realization dawned on him. “I’m dying, aren’t I?” He couldn’t say he hadn’t pictured the scene a few times over his life. Him dying, preferably of something that made him pale and interesting, and someone— _anyone_ —clutching his hand and saying how sorry they were that they hadn’t treated him better. 

Like so many things, it wasn’t nearly as satisfying when it was really happening. 

“I’m afraid it doesn’t look--” Abruptly, Hartley dropped Thomas’s hand and touched his forehead. “Your fever’s broken.” 

“What?”

Hartley took the thermometer from the bedside table and put it in his mouth. “Sit forward.” He applied the stethoscope to Thomas’s chest and back. 

When the thermometer was finally removed, and his temperature pronounced normal, Thomas said, “Bet you’re sorry you said all that.”

“You still have pneumonia,” Hartley said. “But it’s begun to recede, a little, and you’ll be better able to fight it now.” He paused. “And no, I’m not sorry.”

Hartley helped him wash and change into clean pajamas, and re-made the bed while Thomas sat on the chair, wrapped in the duvet. He fell back to sleep quickly, but Hartley was still there when he woke, at daybreak, to Mrs. Poysner saying, “Oh, my lands, it’s a miracle!”

Thomas gathered from the following conversation that he had truly not been expected to last the night, and—a much bigger surprise—that Mrs. Poysner was thoroughly pleased that he had. Doctor Hartley had to leave on his rounds not long after, but all through the day, Mrs. Poysner brought him trays of tea and things to eat, “To keep your strength up.” That happened at least eight times; Thomas lost count. Dinah made her share of visits, too, and even Dulcie came down, in her dressing gown, to ask if he wanted to borrow one of her film magazines. 

At Downton, Thomas thought, everyone but O’Brien would have been saying, “Well, it’s a shame, but if it had to be somebody….” And on hearing of his narrow escape, they’d have been tempted to break out the black armbands. 

Of course, they had had less time to get to know him here. Still, the outpouring of affection was enough to make him wonder if he was in more danger from the pneumonia than Hartley had suggested. But he did feel much better, and by afternoon, he found that he could even lie down for short periods without _actually_ suffocating. 

When Dr. Hartley examined him again that evening, he agreed that Thomas was improving, but warned, “It’ll be some time before you’re well, and there could be setbacks, so stay in bed. We’ll muddle along somehow without you. Now, I’d better be down to dinner before Mrs. Poysner has my head. Someone’ll bring you a tray shortly.”

To Thomas’s surprise, it was Hartley himself who brought it—and not only that, but sat with him while he ate. 

“You’ve had a letter,” he said, pointing it out on the edge of the tray. “It came yesterday, as a matter of fact, but you weren’t well enough…do you want me to read it to you?”

“Yes—er, no,” Thomas said quickly. It was from O’Brien, he saw, and God only knew what she’d written, after his last. He’d been feeling very sorry for himself when he wrote to her—had to be the first stages of the ‘flu. “I’ll look at it later. How is, er….” He tried to think of the name of a patient Hartley might be particularly concerned about. He couldn’t, and settled on, “The village? Any new cases?”

“No, as a matter of fact,” Hartley said. “You may wind up with the distinction of being the village’s last case of Spanish ‘flu. I did attend on a lying-in and a ricked ankle, which I take as a welcome sign that things are returning to normal.” 

Thomas expected that Hartley, too, would return to normal, but he didn’t seem to. For the next few days, he sat with Thomas in the evenings—sometimes mornings or afternoons, too, if his daily calls started late or ended early. Any minute now, Thomas thought, Mrs. Poysner was going to start getting suspicious. The old war tie could only account for so much.

“Haven’t you got anything more important to do than keep me company all the time?” he asked one evening. 

Hartley, after a quick glance at the door, picked up one of Thomas’s hands and kissed the knuckles. “No.”

Thomas looked at him incredulously for a moment. That wasn’t the sort of gesture one made to a footman. Or a valet. But Hartley seemed completely sincere. “Well, all right then,” he answered, at a loss for how else to respond. 

By the beginning of the next week, Thomas was well enough to be bored and restless—but not, according to Hartley, well enough to return to work, even light duties. “There’s no need for you to rush yourself. Dulcie’s back on duty, and with the ‘flu finished, I can manage the practice on my own easily.”

That sounded like Hartley didn’t really need him, in either the house or the practice, and he knew it. He might not mind right now, since he was feeling soft on Thomas…but he couldn’t count on that lasting forever. 

Thomas knew his best move right now was to try to seem sweet and a bit pathetic, since that seemed to be what Hartley liked. Unfortunately, it didn’t come naturally. Thomas had plenty of practice maintaining a cool professional exterior—that and being handsome were the two most important qualities in a footman—but making a conspicuous display of feeling was a different story. He kept forgetting what he was supposed to be doing and showing his real personality instead. 

Case in point, one morning when Hartley took his wristwatch out of his pocket to check the time, Thomas couldn’t keep his disapproval off his face.

“What?” Hartley said. “The strap’s broken.”

“You ought to carry your pocket watch, then,” Thomas said. He’d seen one in Hartley’s dresser.

“Hm? Oh, that doesn’t work. I only keep it because it was my uncle’s.”

“Have you tried to have it repaired?” Thomas asked, an idea forming. 

“No—I suppose I should, but I never think of it—it’s been broken for years.”

“I could look at it.” 

“If you like,” Hartley said. “I don’t imagine it would tax you too much. I’ll get it.”

#

Hartley didn’t have any idea why Thomas wanted to look at his broken watch—bored, Hartley supposed. Hartley had offered to bring him books from the village library, but Thomas wasn’t much of a reader, apart from newspapers. According to Mrs. Poysner, a day or two ago he had tried to convince her he ought to be allowed to polish the silver tea service—the one Hartley was fairly sure hadn’t been used since his mother died—in bed. Playing with Hartley’s watch, at least, wouldn’t stain the sheets. 

He was surprised, then, when after dinner, Thomas presented him with the watch, merrily ticking away. “It seems to be keeping good time now, but you’ll have to check it against your other one.”

“I will,” Hartley said. “Thank you. How did you know how to fix it?”

“It was just the spring—you’d over-wound it.” Thomas shrugged. “My dad was a clockmaker. Taught me a few things.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t go into the trade,” Hartley said. It seemed like something that would suit Thomas—very precise and orderly. 

“Mm,” Thomas said. “I always wanted to be a valet, ever since I was small.” 

“Really,” Hartley said. Then, realizing how that must have sounded, he added, “It’s a perfectly fine ambition; it just doesn’t seem the sort of thing to appeal to a small boy.”

Thomas looked away. “My mum was a lady’s maid, before I came along. She used to tell me about the great house she worked in, for bedtime stories. It sounded—I don’t know. Romantic, being valet in a grand house. And when I was older, I knew there wasn’t much chance of Dad leaving the shop to me…I’d have wound up working for one of my little brothers.”

“Why’s that?”

Thomas didn’t answer for a moment, then said, “When I say my mother was a lady’s maid before I came along…and when I say he was my father….”

It took Hartley a moment to catch on. “Oh.”

“The way I always heard it, Dad had loved her since she was in pigtails and pinafores, but she thought she could do better. But then she got herself in trouble, and the man—my natural father—said she’d no proof it was his, if she had one man, she might have had a dozen. So it was back to Sheffield with her tail between her legs. He married her a couple of months before I was born. I know all that because he threw it in her face every time they fought—how he was good enough to marry her and give her fatherless bastard a name.” 

“Good God,” Hartley said. “That sounds rather cruel.”

Thomas shrugged. “She had a sharp tongue herself.”

“I meant for you.”

“Oh.” Thomas looked up at him and smiled. It seemed to be an effort. “He tried to be…fair. I mean, I was fed and clothed and…given Christmas stockings, same as the others. And he only took a strap to me when I really had it coming, same as the others. But he liked them better—only natural, I suppose. You could tell, when he was playing with them, or listening to their school recitations, it was like they were the center of the world. I was just sort of…there.”

“That must have been hard.” ‘Just sort of…there’ was an apt description of how Hartley had been to his own father, at least until he was about sixteen and old enough to converse intelligently. But it had been the same way with his brother and sisters. 

“He didn’t throw me out, or anything like that, after she died,” Thomas added. “But I was just about twelve then anyway, school-leaving age, so I decided I’d better find a job. Mum had taught me good posture and a decent accent, and I knew a bit about how a big house is run, so it wasn’t too hard to get myself hired on as hall-boy at Downton. Mr. Carson was fairly impressed I applied and came for the interview on my own.”

When Hartley had been twelve, he’d started his first year at public school. He supposed that wasn’t entirely different…but all the arrangements had been made by his parents. If it had been left up to him, he’d have stayed at home. “I’m impressed, too.”

Thomas shrugged, looking embarrassed, as he often did when praised. “It was a long time ago.”

Over the next few weeks, life returned to normal, as Thomas gradually regained his strength and resumed his duties. He seemed steadier somehow, less inclined to take offense and more accepting of the informal style of Hartley’s household. For their part, the rest of the staff seemed glad to have him back, although it did mean things had to be polished a bit more often to keep him from complaining. 

Most promisingly of all, one evening Thomas lingered after undressing him. “Will there be anything else?” he asked, a caress to Hartley’s shoulder suggesting just what sort of “anything” he had in mind.

“Ah—if you like. Are you sure you’re well enough?”

“You’re the doctor; you tell me,” Thomas suggested, nuzzling into his neck.

“Well, I’d—of course I’d have to make a thorough examination….”

“Excellent idea.”

 

#

Some weeks later, Thomas found himself at Foxford Hall, a country house only a few miles from Downton. He’d been back on his feet and assisting with the practice for a week, and Hartley felt sufficiently caught up with the practice to accept an invitation to a Saturday-to-Monday house party. 

Thomas had a feeling he’d expressed an unflattering amount of surprise when Hartley told him of the invitation. He’d barely managed to bite back his first response— _why?_ —and instead ask how Hartley was acquainted with Viscount Ainsley. 

“He’s my cousin,” Hartley had explained. 

There was absolutely no question that his surprise had been unflattering there. Hartley hadn’t seemed to mind too much, though. In fact, he hadn’t told Thomas off for anything since he’d been ill. 

Then again, Hartley’s cousin also expressed an unflattering amount of surprise that he showed up with his own valet. “Everyone else in England is reducing the size of their staff, and you have a valet now, you old counter-jumper?”

“He was with me in the war,” Hartley explained. 

Then the Viscount asked if Hartley would mind having his man see to one of the other gentleman guests, since his newly-hired fourteen year old footman didn’t really know how. It was really very funny.

Thomas had thought he would enjoy swanning around a great house being a visiting valet, lording it over everyone else in the servants’ hall. Instead, he found it all a little bit silly. The major crisis of the afternoon was the discovery that the lid to the soup tureen had chipped. He witnessed three fully-grown adults and the fourteen-year-old footman gathered around the offending piece of china, urgently discussing how to handle the situation. 

“We could use the second-best one,” Mrs. Smith, the housekeeper, said.

“Then we’d have to use all of the second-best china,” the butler, Mr. Wainwright, pointed out. “And we’ve an Earl staying.”

“Maybe I could just sort of… cover the broken place with my thumb, when I carry it in,” the footman suggested. 

“Don’t be an idiot, George,” said Mrs. Smith. “What if we serve something else instead of the soup?”

“I’ve already started the soup!” protested the cook.

Thomas decided he could live without knowing how the emergency resolved itself, and went outside for a smoke. 

He did get to dress Hartley in dinner dress—and undress him out of it, later on—though, so the day wasn’t entirely wasted. 

#

“Are you sure I hadn’t better stay?” Thomas asked, twitching the collar of Hartley’s borrowed riding kit. “I don’t know how you’ll get out of those boots on your own, let alone the jodhpurs.” 

“I expect we’ll be out longer than you will,” Hartley said. “An afternoon hack with Ainsley is more like a polar expedition.” He’d have rather stayed at the house too—or even joined Thomas for tea with his old friends at Downton, if that wouldn’t have been too shocking—but his mother had taught him that a welcome guest joined in with all planned activities and at very least _appeared_ to enjoy them. He’d already tried pointing out that he hadn’t brought riding things—he did not, in fact, own any—but since Ainsley’s butler had rounded some up for him, he had no choice. 

“All the more reason,” Thomas said, stepping in close and slipping an arm around him. “You’ll need warming up when you get back.”

“Maybe I will,” Hartley agreed, nuzzling his neck. “But unless that requires some elaborate preparations I’m not aware of….” He managed to pull himself away. “If I’m not down at the stables soon, Ainsley will wonder what we’re up to.”

“You won’t be any later than Howell—I still have to cram him into his breeches. How, I’m not sure yet. I might need to borrow some lard from the cook.” 

“I doubt she’ll want it back,” Hartley pointed out. The mental image, at least, cooled matters down sufficiently that he could leave the bedroom in riding trousers without fear of embarrassment. “You’d better go and do that, then. So you aren’t late meeting your friends.”

“All right,” Thomas said. “We’ll pick this up again later.”

“I certainly hope so.”

Down at the stables, Hartley found that one positive effect of the war was that the kind of great snorting beasts Ainsley preferred were less available than they had been previously. Hartley privately suspected that they’d all worn themselves out killing Germans. He was issued a placid and smallish roan gelding. Ainsley assured him that the horse was quite hardy, though, so Hartley had little hope that the ride would be shorter than the pre-war standard.

After one of several hair-raising gallops, Ainsley brought his horse alongside Hartley’s. After a few comments about the scenery, he said, “About that valet of yours, Barrow.”

“Yes?” Hartley said cautiously. Had someone noticed something? And if they had, was it the sort of thing he could pass off as the natural closeness of war comrades?

“Did you know he used to be a footman over at Downton Abbey?”

“Yes, I knew that.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t hire him back on. It’s so difficult to find qualified male staff, since the war.” 

Hartley made a noncommittal noise. Ainsley might be feeling him out to see if he knew about the stealing, but since he wasn’t sure, he didn’t want to say anything either way.

“And Howell says he’s very good. I suppose you’re completely satisfied with him?”

“I’ve no complaints.” What was Ainsley on about?

“It’s just that you’ve never had much need of a valet before the war. And I haven’t been able to find one—Wainwright has been doing for me, but that’s hardly fair, when a butler has so much else to do.”

Now Hartley understood. Grandmama would be appalled, if she knew one grandson was trying to steal another’s valet. 

That wasn’t quite fair—there was no indication that Ainsley had any intention of offering Thomas the position behind Hartley’s back. No, he just hoped Hartley would give his _blessing_ to offer him the position. “I think Barrow’s happy where he is,” Hartley said. Was he? Thomas had asked him for a job on the assumption that the alternative was ruin and starvation. Now, the alternative was…everything he’d ever wanted. Valet in a grand house, he’d said. Foxford wasn’t the grandest house in Britain, but it was a far sight grander than Hartley’s. “If we decide to make any changes, I’ll be sure you’re the first to know.”

#

Going back to Downton was…strange. Thomas had written to O’Brien, and she had arranged with Lady Grantham to have a free hour to visit with him. He was glad enough to see her—and he thought she was pleased to see him, too—but sitting in Mrs. Hughes’ parlor and staring at each other over a teapot for a solid hour was not something they’d ever done. 

“Her Ladyship’s recovered from the ‘flu?” he asked. They’d already covered that in letters—in fact, they had worked out that he and Lady Grantham had each almost died on the same night—but he didn’t know what else to say.

“Yes, thank Providence. And you?”

“Right as rain.”

“What are you making of your new position?”

“I like it. It’s…different.” 

“That’s good.”

People kept walking by and looking at them, too. Even a new maid who hadn’t been working there when he left came by for a gawp. 

“Do we have to have that door open?” Thomas asked. It wasn’t like they could have the sort of talk they usually did, when anybody might be listening.

“According to Mrs. Hughes, it wouldn’t be proper for me to entertain a gentleman caller with the door closed.”

Thomas struggled to keep a straight face, failed, and burst out laughing. After a moment, O’Brien did, too. “Good God,” he said, when they’d wound down. “She doesn’t really think…?”

“No, she isn’t quite that stupid,” O’Brien said. “It’s a matter of having the same rule for everyone, she says. The housemaids staged a revolt. About being able to entertain men friends.”

“Really.”

She nodded. “It’s that new girl, Frances. She worked in a munitions factory all through the war, and got used to being able to come and go as she pleased, outside work hours. She organized the lot of them to insist that, with the shortage of men since the war they need more than just their half-days if they’re going to have any hope of landing husbands.”

“I’d think that’s exactly how Mrs. Hughes wants it,” Thomas said. 

“Nobody wants an elderly housemaid, and I don’t think she’s planning on the housekeeper’s post becoming vacant any time soon,” O’Brien pointed out. “And we’ve all seen the dangers of having maids meeting men on the sly. So now they’re each allowed to invite a man to tea once a month.”

“With the door open.”

“Right.” 

“And here I’ve used up your quota for the whole month.”

O’Brien snorted. “They’re supposed to pay sixpence for cakes, too, but I haven’t.”

“Now I’m hurt. Just see if I propose, after that.” Suddenly, things felt much more normal. 

On his way out, Thomas encountered Anna in the passage. After they had looked at each other warily for a moment or two, she seized the moral high ground by saying, “I hope you’re settling in well in your new place.”

It was an opportunity he’d been waiting for since O’Brien had written him with the news of Bates’ arrest. He opened his mouth to say that at least he hadn’t been arrested for murder, so he was doing better than some people. What came out instead was, “I’m very happy, thanks.” 

The look on Anna’s face was more satisfying, somehow, than if he’d said what he was originally planning. 

He wound up back at Foxford hours before Hartley returned, quite promisingly chilled. Thomas managed to warm him up satisfactorily before it was time to dress him and the rather-less-appealing Howell for dinner. 

Fortunately, Howell turned in early, meaning that Thomas could get him settled for the night and then return to Hartley’s room to take care of him in a more leisurely fashion. 

“Can you stay?” Hartley asked, pouring them each a drink and sitting down beside Thomas on the bed. 

“For a bit. They’ve got me rooming with the footman; he’ll notice if I don’t go up at all.” At home, it was safe enough for Thomas to spend the night in Hartley’s room sometimes, provided he slipped back to his own just before it was time for Dinah to wake him. 

“There’s something we should talk about,” Hartley said, his tone not at all playful. 

Bloody buggering fuck. Thomas tried to remember what he’d done. Nothing recently, surely. Maybe Lord Ainsley had passed on some Downton gossip? 

“It’s nothing bad,” Hartley said. “In fact, it’s…well, it might be good news.”

Somehow, Thomas was not much reassured. Maybe because whatever it was, Hartley didn’t seem happy about it. “All right.”

“Well,” Hartley said. “I hope you don’t misunderstand what I’m saying.”

No, not the least bit reassuring. 

“My cousin—Lord Ainsley—is looking for a valet.”

“So?”

“So, he…hinted, that he’d like to offer you the position, if I no longer have need of you.”

Thomas could not believe he was hearing this. He’d thought they’d been getting on well. “And, what, you’ve been looking for a chance to get rid of me? Right, that’s bloody fantastic news. Can’t tell you how thrilled I am.”

“That’s precisely the misunderstanding I was hoping to avoid,” Hartley said. “I’ve no desire to get rid of you; to the contrary, I should like it very much if you stayed on.”

“All right, then,” Thomas said, his ruffled feathers soothed. “Then why are you telling me about how your cousin wants to give me a job?”

“Because you’ve always wanted to be a valet in a great house, and this is your chance.”

“What, and I’m not allowed to change my mind?”

“Nothing would make me happier. But if that is what you still want, I shouldn’t like to stand in your way. I know that you didn’t feel that you had much choice, when you first came to me, and I wanted you to know that the situation has changed.”

This conversation seemed to be going in a much better direction than he had initially feared, but Thomas still didn’t feel that he completely understood. “You want me to stay with you?”

“Yes, very much.”

“But you also want me to know there’s another job available for the asking?” That didn’t make sense, when Hartley could have ensured the outcome he said he wanted simply by not saying anything. 

“Yes,” Hartley said. “I love you, and I want you to be happy. And it’s not as though I’d never see you again--”

“What?”

“He is my cousin. He invites me several times a year.”

“No, what did you say before that?”

“I love you and want you to be happy—and I’m quite sure you heard me the first time.”

“I thought I might be hallucinating,” Thomas said. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing anyone really said. Much less to him. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever been happy. Unless, maybe, that was what these last few weeks had been. “I, er…well, of course I’m staying. With you. Not here.” 

“Good,” Hartley said. 

“I don’t think I would be happy, if I wasn’t with you. I think…maybe that means I love you too.”

“I think you may be right,” Hartley said, and kissed him.


End file.
